by Liz Carlyle
He cut her an odd, sidelong glance. “Just me, eh?”
“Just you,” she said. “And you are coming as a friend of the hostess.”
“I don’t give a fig for politics, either,” he grumbled.
“I never thought you did,” she said. “But I daresay you give a very great fig with regard to de Vendenheim’s favor. Indeed, to account him something of an acquaintance—well, that, I should think might come in handy during your investigations.”
“Hmph,” said Napier. But he was clearly mulling over her argument. “I know de Vendenheim slightly, and his reputation very well. I spoke rashly when I used the word pawn. He is more like a battering ram. He is no one’s fool.”
“Nor, I think, are you,” said Anisha quietly.
“You tricked me,” he said.
“I did not,” she returned. “You said an evening—not a night—at the time of my choosing, with no preconditions.”
“I meant . . . well, something rather more private than a dinner party,” he said.
“Alas, you did not stipulate,” said Anisha lightly. “So, will you come?”
His eyes narrowed again, and Anisha realized she might have underestimated him.
After a long moment passed, he spoke. “You came here meaning to persuade me to attend this dinner party, didn’t you?” he said, his voice low and accusing. “You were very confident of yourself, too. You needed another gentleman, and you thought I’d leap at the chance.”
“You seem intent on making this into something nefarious,” she said, forcing a calm she did not quite feel, “when I’m merely inviting you to dinner.”
“But you’ve left it rather late,” he pointed out. “Too late, really, to graciously invite anyone else should I refuse.”
“It would make no sense for you to refuse,” Anisha said.
“It would make a great deal of sense if I wished to make a point.”
“And that point would be?”
“That I am not a toy to be played with, madam, as it suits you,” he said, planting both hands on his desktop and leaning over it almost predatorily. “No, I think that we shall re-strike our bargain in a way that better suits me.”
Anisha did not falter. “Very well. I am amenable to compromise.”
“Then I shall come to your dinner party,” he said tightly. “I will put on my finest suit of clothes, do my best to keep my elbows off Lord Ruthveyn’s dinner table, and try not to trip over my tongue—”
“Oh, what nonsense!” Anisha interjected. “You are quite as polished as any gentleman, Mr. Napier. Pray get on with it.”
“All in good time,” he returned. “I’m thinking.”
“No, you are scheming,” she returned.
“Well, you ought to know it when you see it,” he grumbled. “You, Lady Anisha, are very unassuming. You purposely put people off their guard. Like a pretty jewel, you are dainty and vivid, thus one does not at first notice all those sharp facets.”
“If you mean I’m not some sort of doormat, you are quite right,” she answered. “I was once; I cannot recommend it. Now, you want something of me. What?”
“I want you to go to the theater with me,” he said. “I have the loan of a box.”
Anisha lifted both eyebrows in surprise. “The theater?” she murmured. “Why, how very kind.”
But it was not entirely kind. He simply meant, like most men, to have his way. Anisha, however, was not stupid. If it came to it, she had Frankie Fitzwater on the hook to make up her dinner numbers. Still, for reasons she could not quite explain, she very much wanted Napier at that party.
Keep your friends close, Rance had said, and your enemies closer.
But which was Royden Napier?
She did not know. And since she did not know, there was only one thing, really, to be done.
“If we may go as friends,” she finally said, “and if I may bring my brother, Lord Lucan Forsythe—”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he interjected.
“Then yes, I should love to. What will we be seeing?”
“Les Huguenots.”
“Les Huguenots?” Anisha felt her eyes widen. “I thought it was gone!”
“It is reopening at Covent Garden.” His gaze suddenly warmed. “You are a serious fan of the opera?”
Anisha blushed. “Well, we did not see a vast deal of it in Calcutta,” she said on a laugh. “But yes, I have become very fond of it indeed. In fact, I just saw Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore with—ah, but never mind that.”
“Yes, I saw you there,” he interjected. “With Lazonby and Lord Bessett’s mother, Lady Madeleine MacLachlan.”
He had seen her there?
A sudden chill seemed to fall over the room. Was this really about Napier’s interest in her?
Less certain now, Anisha soldiered on. “So you saw us,” she said lightly, wondering if he’d been there by chance or for some other purpose. “Then doubtless you noticed, too, that Lazonby slept through it.”
“As I’ve said before,” Napier murmured, “the man is a Philistine, amongst other, less savory things.”
Anisha grew very quiet. “I am very much afraid, Mr. Napier,” she finally said, “that you and I shall soon part company if you insist upon insulting a gentleman I account my friend—however unenlightened his tastes may be.”
Napier made a curt bow. “I see I must bide my time,” he said stiffly, “and permit Lazonby to prove what he is—which, inevitably, he will do.”
“Oh, I already know precisely what Lazonby is,” she said, her hand already on the doorknob. “And my feelings for him—whatever they are—will not change. Now, do you still wish to dine with me? Do you still wish to go to the theater? As friends? Feel free to say yes or no.”
For a long moment he was perfectly silent. “Yes to both, then,” he finally answered, but he did not look happy. “And now I’d best say good day to you, ma’am. I shall see you at dinner tomorrow. And at the theater the week after that.”
A few moments later, Anisha found herself emerging from the haze of sweat and overcooked vegetables to step out into the still-crisp air of a spring day, drawing her paisley shawl snug about her shoulders as she went. On the distant side of Whitehall Street, she could see the carriage, and Brogden, their burly coachman, lingering almost guardedly on the pavement near the Admiralty.
She hastened up the street, but just as she neared the corner, a figure practically leapt into her path. Anisha jerked her gaze up, straight into the frigid blue-green eyes of Jack Coldwater.
He threw out a hand as if to block her path. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but you cannot help him, you know, by coming here. You cannot change the truth.”
Anisha drew herself up to her full height. “I beg your pardon, sir, but we have not been intro—”
“I should hope, ma’am,” he interjected, eyes ablaze, “that something so dire as an innocent man’s murder would obviate the need for petty formalities.”
“Then you would think wrongly.” Anisha lifted her skirts to brush past him. “I shan’t bandy words in the street with a stranger. Kindly step from my path.”
But Coldwater blocked her, snaring her arm near the elbow and almost dragging her back. On the other side of Whitehall Place, two men froze uncertainly. From the corner of her eye, she could see Brogden hastening across the street.
Anger rising, she jerked against Coldwater’s grasp. “Unhand me, sir.”
But he did not. “I do not know what manner of game you play, Lady Anisha,” he growled, tightening his grip, “but I know this: Lazonby is a cold-blooded killer.”
“You are stark mad,” she said sharply. “How dare you!”
“But you saw him!” Coldwater’s words were choked with rage. “By God, you saw him attack me in the library that day. He was the madman! Not m—”
His words were cut off when Brogden seized his coat collar, flinging Coldwater aside as if he’d been weightless. The young man sailed with a crash onto the railing alo
ngside Number Four, his hat tumbling off to reveal his shock of bright red hair.
The coachman brandished a beefy fist. “Get up, yer little blighter!” he roared. “Get up and I’ll give yer a taste o’ this to go wiv it.”
Coldwater responded with a curse, staggering to his feet. Across the way, the two men had been joined by two more, these in uniform.
“Thank you, Brogden.” A little shaken, Anisha leaned across and laid her hand on his arm. “Come, leave him. Let us go.”
Turning, Brogden’s countenance softened. “Aye, then,” he snarled over his shoulder, “and good riddance.”
Coldwater, however, was not done. “Yes, go, Lady Anisha!” he shouted, snatching up his hat. “Go back to that devil’s coven of your brother’s! Do you think I don’t know what you people are? You ought to be burned as witches, the lot of you.”
“Pay ’im no heed, m’lady,” Brogden grimly advised, urging her up the street.
But the young man continued to shout after her. “You’ve done naught but fall in with Lazonby’s lies,” he cried. “He’s a murderer! And all of you know it!”
On the edge of Whitehall Street Anisha froze, trembling with sudden rage. “Wait here,” she commanded, extracting her hand from Brogden’s arm.
Then she turned and marched back down the street to face Coldwater, who looked incongruous with his wool jacket twisted awkwardly about him. But he had shut his mouth, and his eyes had widened at her return.
“You are a newspaperman, Mr. Coldwater, I believe,” she said tartly.
“So?” His eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“My point being, sir, that you cannot be an utter fool,” she went on, “but merely a misguided lunatic. For surely a reporter knows the laws of defamation? The economic risk, if you will, of standing in a public thoroughfare and calling innocent people witches and murderers?”
“Mind your own business,” said Coldwater.
Anisha stabbed a finger in his face. “You made this my business,” she retorted, “when you seized my arm and bruised it. And when you slandered me in front of that growing crowd. Shall I go back inside Number Four and show the porter these marks upon my arm? Shall I tell him you have just maligned a peer of the realm in the middle of Whitehall?”
“I did no such thing,” Coldwater gritted, but he was inching away from her now.
Anisha turned on the street to face the four gentlemen—who now numbered five—and spoke in a calm, carrying voice. “I am Lady Anisha Stafford, widow of Captain John Stafford, late of the Bengal Horse,” she said. “This madman has just assaulted and slandered me in front of you. Who amongst you is gentleman enough to go inside and give the porter your name as a witness?”
Scarcely a heartbeat passed before a whiskered man in the red and black of the 11th Hussars jerked off his shako and stepped across the street. “My brother was at Sobraon and Ferozeshah with the Ninth Foot,” he said. “I’ll gladly go. But first, ma’am, if we might just dispatch this rascal for you—”
Coldwater, however, had already snatched up his folio and was striding down the street in the direction of the river. And in the back of her mind, Anisha was already wondering what on earth she was to tell Rance.
The answer came to her at once. Nothing.
Coldwater really was half mad, just as Rance had always maintained. And there was no point in further inciting Rance’s anger. No point in writing to Raju. No point, really, in telling anyone at all.
Anisha turned to the officer and smiled. “Why, I believe you have run that fellow off!” she said. “I thank you, sir, and bid you good day.”
Back across the main thoroughfare, Anisha waited until Brogden had let down the steps of the carriage. Then, as he straightened, she set a finger to her lips, warning in her eyes.
Brogden’s amiable countenance darkened. Then it relented, and he gave her a conspiratorial nod.
“Aye, then, ma’am,” he said. “As ye wish.”
Anisha climbed inside. “St. James’s Place,” she ordered, “but not for long.”
Across from the St. James Society, just as she’d hoped, Mr. Ringgold was manning the door at the Quartermaine Club, though it was now just midafternoon. Anisha descended, ordering Brogden to turn the coach at the end of the lane.
“Mr. Ringgold,” she said, marching across the street, “be so good as to go downstairs and ask Mr. Quartermaine if he might see me. But across the street, if he would be so kind.”
“Hmph,” Pinkie grunted, casting a disparaging glance at the St. James Society. But he went, Anisha watching through the glass as he descended the stairs. Hastening across the narrow lane, she requested that tea be sent up to the club’s private library.
She was still standing by the window, pondering her words, when it arrived. Quartermaine came in on the footman’s heels, his hat still in hand. His eyes were distrustful, but his smile was wry.
“Well, Lady Anisha,” he said. “To what do I owe the extraordinary pleasure of being summoned across the street in the middle of my workday?”
She felt her cheeks warm. “I beg your pardon for that,” she said. “It was badly done of me. But I thought you mightn’t wish an unattended lady calling on you.”
His gaze swept down her length. “Actually, I can think of nothing more pleasant,” he murmured, “than a lady unattended—especially if she’s pretty.”
Anisha felt her spine stiffen. “Mr. Quartermaine, it is not necessary to flirt with me.”
He shrugged almost lazily. “Most ladies of the ton seem to expect it of me,” he said, the wry smile shifting to something darker. “And one does hate to disappoint. But this, I collect, is pure business?”
“It is a sort of business, yes,” she said with asperity. “I wish your opinion of something. Will you sit down and have a cup of tea?”
“With all respect, ma’am, I have plenty of my own business across the street.” Quartermaine propped one shoulder on the doorframe, having hardly entered the room. “More than I can manage, most days.”
“Yes,” she said briskly. “Yes, I do forget you’ve young men to fleece.”
“Just so,” he said blandly, all flirtation gone from his eyes. “But you may ask me whatever you please, so long as it’s quickly done. I’ll help you if I can.”
Resigned, Anisha withdrew the notes she’d stolen from Napier’s file. “I wish you to look at these,” she said, thrusting them at him.
He did so, his eyes methodically scanning each, then gave a low whistle. “I don’t think I want to know where you got them.”
“You do not,” she agreed. “Just tell what you think of them. Are they real? Would someone do murder over such a sum?”
“I’ve seen men knifed over two shillings,” he said, passing them back to her. “And yes, they look real enough to me. Why don’t you ask Lazonby?”
She snared her lip between her teeth. “I shall probably have to,” she confessed.
“Ah,” said Quartermaine. “Then he did not give them to you?”
Anisha realized he was probing. “Obviously not,” she replied, pointing at the circled word. “And what about this notation? ‘B.H. Syndicate?’ Have you any idea what it means?”
Quartermaine’s eyes flicked over the paper again, this time obviously catching on the word.
“Well?” she said.
“It looks insignificant to me,” he finally replied, picking up his hat.
It was clearly the end of their conversation. “Thank you,” she answered, tucking the notes into her reticule. “I’m very sorry to have troubled you, but I didn’t know who else to ask.”
Quartermaine bestirred himself lazily from the door. “Well, I might venture to suggest,” he said, “that perhaps you ought not ask anyone at all.”
She paced toward him. “Whatever do you mean?”
He tipped his hat toward the reticule she’d tossed onto one of the leather sofas. “If you wish my honest opinion, ma’am, those notes make me fear you’re meddling in things—perha
ps dangerous things—that are none of your affair,” he said. “Lazonby, however wretched he may think himself, is, at the very least, free—and still breathing. Perhaps there comes a time to let well enough alone.”
Anisha felt herself quiver with indignation. “Is that some sort of threat, sir?”
His eyes softened; genuinely, she thought. “Certainly not, ma’am,” he said, slapping his hat back on his head as he left. “But it is what we here in the gaming business would call very sound advice.”
Chapter 7
Of paled pearls and rubies red as blood.
William Shakespeare, “A Lover’s Complaint”
“Ooh, my lady, you do look a sight!”
With that, Janet stepped back to admire the reflected glory of the long string of pearls she’d just wrapped round Anisha’s neck—wrapped it twice, as a matter of fact, and then a third time.
“Oh, Janet, I don’t know.” Anisha stared into the dressing mirror, her hand coming up to touch the ruby clasp. “They just seem so . . . ostentatious.”
Janet set her head to one side. “Well, they are a show, ma’am, I do admit.”
Anisha stood, went to the cheval glass, and turned a little sideways. “How many are there, one wonders?” she murmured.
“Two hundred and ninety-three.” Janet spoke with confidence. “I counted ’em once.”
The lowest strand hung below Anisha’s breasts, which were nearly bared by her low-cut dinner gown. Against the emerald green silk and her honey-colored skin, the pearls seemed pale as milk. Almost stark, really.
The priceless strands had belonged to her Scottish grandmother, a tall, imperious woman who, even bent with age, had reached almost to Raju’s shoulder. Not especially happy with her son’s choice of bride, the good lady had made but one yearlong sojourn to India to see her grandchildren. Nonetheless, at her death, the elegant pearls had come to Anisha, her only granddaughter.
And Anisha loved them. She’d even been passing fond of her grandmother, for she now understood how hard it was to meld two cultures into one. Doing so had been the single hardest challenge of her life, and it had brought with it more pain than even her marriage, which had been more of a slow drift into disappointment.