by Liz Carlyle
But all the struggle aside, Anisha truly valued her Scottish half just as much as her Indian half. The pearls, however, having been strung for a far larger woman, seemed overwhelming on Anisha’s small frame.
And they simply weren’t her.
However hard she might try, Anisha suddenly realized, she would never appear—or feel—especially British. And tonight, inexplicably, she felt tired of trying. On impulse, she snapped the ruby clasp open and sent the pearls clattering into the porcelain dish on her night table.
“There,” she said, lifting her gaze. “That’s better.”
Janet tilted her head in the other direction. “I don’t know, ma’am,” the maid finally said. “Now you look . . . well, starkers.”
Returning to her dressing stool, Anisha agreed. Absent the pearls, the emerald gown seemed to bare her flesh from shoulder to shoulder, and nearly down to her nipples. The dress was newly made up by one of London’s most fashionable modistes, and very much le dernier cri—more so than anything Anisha owned.
But no. It would not do.
A mad, impulsive notion seized her. And then, the more she thought on it, the notion began to feel more brilliant than foolish. “Mother’s kundan choker,” she finally said. “That’s what’s needed—and fetch me her green and blue sari. The paisley one.”
Janet made a wincing expression. “Oh, ma’am, I don’t think English ladies wear them sort o’ things,” she said. “Not to a dinner party.”
But Anisha looked again at her bare shoulders and decided. “This one does,” she said. “At least after a fashion. Oh, and the brooch and earrings! I’ll need them, too. Besides, Janet, it is my party. I believe I shall do as I please.”
Janet set her fists on her hips and grinned. “Well, bully for you, ma’am,” she said. “I’ll find that thing in three shakes.”
The maid trotted good-naturedly off to the dressing room. Anisha unlocked the jewel case and lifted out the pieces she wanted. The long, dangling earrings were easily put on. Then, with Janet’s help, she fastened the choker. It lay cool and heavy round her neck like a wide golden collar, the finely hammered metal glowing behind the alternating rows of rose-cut diamonds and multihued gemstones. The last row, the short dangles made of alternating emeralds and sapphires, served to draw the eye up from her bodice.
The distraction was further enhanced when Anisha pleated the sari and fastened it near her right hip with the brooch. Then, wrapping it round behind her back, she brought it over her left shoulder and fanned out the pleats a bit, leaving it to hang almost to her knee, rather like a long, elegant shawl.
“Now,” said Janet a little triumphantly, “the peacock feathers!”
“Why not?” said Anisha.
In a trice, the feathers were found and pinned into her hair. Not so much a hat as a sort of headpiece, the long and elegant plumes gave Anisha the illusion of height—well, relatively speaking.
Leaving the dressing table, she returned to the cheval glass and let her gaze sweep critically down. The ensemble looked good, if a bit exotic. The sari was not made to be worn in quite that fashion, admittedly. Yet Anisha found it comfortable. Such was her life, now more than ever—a hash of different worlds.
Janet was plucking at one of the pleats to straighten it. “I like this,” she said. “It’s a bit like what her ladyship called an arisaid, but silk.”
Her ladyship, Anisha knew, was a term the servants had used for her grandmother, but rarely, if ever, for Anisha’s mother.
“An arisaid?” she echoed. “What is that?”
“A long shawl of a thing,” said Janet. “But you’d not remember it, I’m sure. Lud, I barely do. But if the weather was the least snappish, she’d throw it over her shoulder and pin it on with a big, silver brooch. Sometimes she belted it. Odd, it was.”
Anisha searched her mind and came up with just the vaguest memory. But it skittered away again when she heard a carriage slow, then come rattling through the gateposts.
“Heavens, Janet.” Anisha’s hand fluttered to the choker, as if touching it might give her strength. “Has someone come early?”
Together they hastened through to her sitting room. At the window, Anisha drew back the underdrapes with one finger and peered down. The carriage, an elegant black landau, was drawing to a halt in the semicircular drive. It was easily recognized, for it bore the arms of the Earl of Lazonby and was the same carriage that had brought Anisha from the docks that long-ago day. Rarely, however, had she seen it since, for Rance—independent to the bone—preferred to drive himself, or simply to walk.
The first and second footmen were going down the stairs, but Rance, as usual, was ahead of them, and looking altogether too handsome for Anisha’s taste.
Having already thrown open the carriage door, he leapt down unaided, his brass-knobbed stick and top hat caught together in one hand, his black evening cloak billowing out behind to reveal a shimmering, pewter-colored lining. Beneath it he wore a black tailcoat and trousers with an elegant white cravat, and save for his unruly, wind-tossed curls, he looked every inch a man of fashion.
Up close, however, Anisha knew it would be different. No amount of tailoring would ever cloak Rance Welham in civility, for a rough-edged mercenary always shone through any veneer fine fashion might provide.
Janet made a low sound of feminine appreciation. “Lord love us, ma’am, if it isn’t Lazonby all togged out to the nines,” she murmured, “and a fine specimen of manhood he is, too.”
“Yes, and he knows it,” muttered Anisha, remembering their last parting. “He is also a full forty minutes early.”
“Want me to have Higgenthorpe put him in the parlor to cool his heels?”
“No.” Anisha let the curtain fall. “No, Janet, I shall go down. How do I look?”
The maid’s critical eye ran down her. “Well, not very English,” she said.
Lazonby went up the steps feeling oddly out of place for reasons he couldn’t explain. Hadn’t he entered this house at least a hundred times before? Two hundred, more like. And yet tonight something hung over him, portentous and unspoken—something besides this rare foray into polite society.
Or perhaps it was the overly elaborate cravat Horsham had practically lynched him with. Perhaps it was choking off the air—oxygen, Dr. von Althausen called it—from his brain.
In Ruthveyn’s grand entrance hall, all was as usual; the fine paintings marching up and down the walls, the smell of beeswax in the air, and the thick green Turkish carpet rolled out across the marble floor like a strip of lush bottomland.
Higgenthorpe greeted him warmly, carefully draping Lazonby’s evening cloak across his arm and taking the hat and stick as they waltzed through their usual routine of enquiring after one another’s health and remarking upon the weather.
This time, however, Anisha interrupted from the landing. “Hello, Rance,” she said coolly. “You’re rather early.”
Lazonby turned, his breath catching at the sight. Something deep in his chest seemed to twist as she flowed gracefully down the staircase, drawing his eyes like a compass to north.
But he regained himself and grinned. “I was all out of whisky,” he teased. “And I knew you would feel sorry for me.”
She flicked him an odd look as he approached. “That once-dependable old saw is losing teeth, my dear, at a prodigious rate,” she said.
He dared not ask what she meant but caught both her hands in his and kissed her cheek anyway. “Anisha,” he murmured, drawing back to look her up and down. “You look . . . my God—breathtaking.”
She drew her hands from his with a chiding glance. “Oh, don’t flirt with me, Rance,” she said, breezing efficiently past him and toward the parlor. “Seriously, do you want a sherry? Or something stronger?”
“Something stronger,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”
Following on her heels, he watched the trailing paisley thing shimmer like a silken waterfall behind her as she moved. Anisha’s hair was twisted up to
night to reveal the swanlike turn of her neck, the arrangement adorned with peacock feathers that matched the dangling strands of emeralds and sapphires she wore in her ears. He caught up with her just inside the room, and although his instincts were admittedly muted when it came to Anisha, he could still sense her discontent.
This, then, was the thing hanging over him. It had to be. Anisha was still angry over his having left her in St. James. But the truth was, she had left him. No matter how desperately he’d wished to go after Coldwater, he would never have left a lady standing in the street.
An empty glass already in hand, she cut him an odd, sidelong glance, a smile playing at one corner of her mouth. “At least you came tonight,” she said, drawing the stopper from Ruthveyn’s whisky decanter. “I feared you mightn’t, you know.”
“Is that your way of saying you weren’t sure you could count on me?” he asked, his voice deceptively light. “Because if memory serves, I have never failed you, Anisha. I have never made you a promise I did not keep. And I never will.”
At that, she hesitated, the decanter tipped over the glass. “Do you know, I believe you are right,” she quietly acknowledged. “So, did you run your quarry to ground last week?”
“Coldwater?” he said, watching her dainty, capable hands upon the crystal. “Oh, aye. Followed him all the way to Hackney. He’s got a cottage there—and a sister, just as Pinkie claimed.”
She poured herself a sherry, then led him toward the sofa opposite the hearth. Tonight the parlor had been opened onto the more formal withdrawing room by two sets of double doors in anticipation of the crowd.
He wished, suddenly, that it was the small, intimate room he was accustomed to. But he sat, and sipped for a moment at his whisky—even as he fought to keep his eyes from her. And yet he could feel her warm brown gaze upon him, strong and steady. It was a gaze a man could drown in were he not careful.
It struck him, and not for the first time, that he should simply stay away from Anisha. It would be easier, perhaps. Indeed, he should have insisted to Ruthveyn all those weeks ago to order Geoff to keep watch over his family. But Geoff had been slated to go to Belgium; for how long, no one had known. And Ruthveyn—well, Lazonby owed him. Owed him his very life, really. It was the least he could do, to keep young Luc from utter ruin and to bear Anisha company in her brother’s absence.
The fact that it was beginning to feel like a knife twisting in his heart every time he saw her . . . well, that was a pain he would simply have to endure. And he could endure it. The long years in prison had steeled him to survive even when hope was lost.
“So,” Anisha pressed, drawing him from his reverie, “what sort of cottage do they have?”
“Oh, a fine, large one,” he said casually. “With a deep rear garden. I got a look at the sister, too.”
“Did you? How?”
He flashed a grin. “As any common Peeping Tom might,” he replied. “I waited till dark, climbed over the garden gate, and watched her through a window.”
“Rance!” she chided. “Well, what was she like?”
He shrugged. “Good-looking, with a great pile of chestnut hair,” he said. “Something shy of thirty, I’d guess.”
“And God knows you’re accounted an expert in such matters,” said Anisha with only a hint of sarcasm. “Did you see Coldwater?”
“No, but he was upstairs, for one of the lamps was lit,” said Lazonby. “The bounder was probably burning the midnight oil, busy running down the reputation of his next victim.”
Anisha laughed, and if it sounded a little forced, well, that was best overlooked. So Lazonby spent the next few minutes telling her what little he’d learned in the pubs and shops he’d visited during his forays into Hackney, realizing, as he stepped through it again, how very much he had needed to discuss it with her.
Coldwater and his sister had come from Boston a year or two earlier. The newspaperman was believed a little younger than she, and had never married. Nothing was known of the sister’s husband save that he’d left his wife childless and situated comfortably enough that she could keep a gig, a nice cottage, and two servants who lived in.
At the end, Anisha sipped pensively at her sherry. “And that’s it?”
“Aye.” Lazonby searched his mind, but there seemed nothing more to say.
A quiet mood fell across the room, broken only by the ticking of the mantel clock, and by the clinking of silver and porcelain as the dining table was laid across the passageway. He polished off the last of his whisky and considered pouring himself another—he’d always made himself at home here—but a glance at the clock suggested he ought not.
Instead, he made the mistake of saying what was on his mind.
“Anisha, you’re different tonight,” he said. “And it’s not just the exotic attire. You feel . . . distant.”
“Do I?” she murmured, staring at him over her glass. “I thought your legendary intuition was useless with me.”
“And my legendary charm,” he said, forcing a smile. “You’ve always been immune to both.”
She lowered her glass, and with it her gaze. “I believe that I am,” she said quietly. “What I feel for you . . . well, it has nothing to do with charm.”
“Nish.” He reached out and brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “We are beyond something so trivial as that, you and I. Aren’t we?”
She looked away. “We are beyond a lot of things, I suppose,” she said. “We have become—just as you once predicted—old friends.”
He sobered his expression. “Aye, and I think any man worth his salt can sense when a woman whom he cares about is not perfectly content,” he said. “I wish, my dear, that your spirits were half as high as your looks. I have never seen you more lovely.”
At that, she set her glass away with a sharp chink. “Please, Rance, I am asking again,” she said, her gaze drifting to the window. “Don’t flirt with me. I’m tired of it.”
“Nish, I don’t flirt,” he said, touching her lightly on the shoulder.
“Rance, really!” She trilled with laughter, but when she turned back, there was no humor in her eyes. “You are the worst womanizer in Christendom. You’ve admitted as much.”
“Not with you,” he said, dropping his hand. “Anisha, I do not flirt with you. Not—well, not since that first day.”
“Then save your breath now,” she said churlishly, picking up her sherry again. “There will be near a dozen ladies here shortly. One of them will surely suit you.”
“Anisha,” he murmured. “If this is about what happened in the garden—”
“Look, never mind,” she said, rising abruptly. “I want to talk to you about something important.”
He wanted to tell her that she was important; that on no account did he wish her unhappy. But something was off between them tonight. It was as if they danced a familiar tune together, yet slightly out of step. So he held his tongue and watched as she went to the small secretary by the door, dropped the front, and extracted a folio.
“I went to see Napier yesterday,” she said, returning to her chair.
“Against my wishes,” he said gruffly.
“Yes, but in keeping with mine,” she retorted. “There was no connection to Coldwater that I could find. But I did take copious notes, which I wish you to read. I think it’s nothing you don’t already know, but see if a name or detail jogs your memory.”
He sighed and held out his hand. “Very well. And thanks.”
But she opened the folder and took out two small bits of paper. “Now these I simply stole,” she said, passing them to him instead.
“You stole them?” His eyes widened. “From Napier’s files?”
“Actually, I reappropriated them,” she said, “because, unless I greatly misunderstand the laws of England, they are your property, not the Crown’s. They should have been returned upon your exoneration.”
He looked at both papers, mildly surprised. “I daresay you’re right,” he said. “These
are, at least on their surface, legally enforceable instruments of debt.”
“Yes, so long as no one quibbles about the gaming aspect of the thing,” she dryly added. “I take comfort in knowing my travails with Luc have at least gained me an education. So, are they significant to the case in any way, do you imagine?”
“No, they were probably taken from my rooms in the police search.” He tossed them back onto the file. “All water under the bridge now.”
“Still, that’s a lot of money,” said Anisha in the tone of a good Scot.
“Aye, well, I played deep, Nish, in those days,” he said ruefully. “Those debts are nothing to some I collected at the tables—and nothing to some I lost, once or twice.”
“Still, your rare losses aside, there must have been a great many people who were glad to see the back of you when you headed off to Newgate.”
“Oh, aye,” he said quietly.
“And these notes of hand?”
He shrugged. “Worthless, I expect,” he said. “As to the rest of my winnings, I spent that and plenty more on barristers and bribery. Just paying off the dashed hangman to turn his head cost me three hundred guineas.”
“How did you manage it?” she murmured. “I have often wondered.”
He stared long and hard at her over his whisky. “Sutherland did it,” he said quietly. “Sutherland and Father. They took care of everything because, as the padre always says, the Fraternitas looks after its own.”
“They did not do everything,” she said with asperity. “They did not suffer through those awful years in the French Foreign Legion, fighting for their lives in North Africa. They did not live through the horror of being twice imprisoned.”
She was defending him again; defending him even though she was angry with him. And perhaps she had cause to be. The heavy silence washed back in.
“Listen, Nish,” he finally said, slumping a little in his chair. “I owe you an apology for last week. For what happened between us. And for allowing you to drive off that day in St. James’s.”