The Bride Wore Pearls

by Liz Carlyle

  “But an ordinary lout in his dry altogether will do?”

  She cut him a wry glance. “We shall see,” she answered. “I’ll put him through his paces and see if he can please me.”

  “Witch,” he said, yanking her up from the floor and kissing her again, this time with no hint of restraint. And when he’d finished, there was no laughter in Anisha; just a look of dazed desire in her eyes and a slight tremble in her knees.

  “Now go sit down near the fire,” he said more gently, turning her in his arms to face the table. “Fill our plates and pour the wine. I’ll see to the boots.”

  Casting a dark glance over her shoulder as she went, Anisha did as he ordered, going to the little table and uncovering the dishes. Rance managed to drag off his wet boots and set them by the hearth. His waistcoat followed, and then his trousers and stockings, which he hung from a pair of hooks that had been hammered into the thick wooden mantel, likely for just such a purpose.

  Down to his shirt and drawers, he sat opposite her on the settle.

  “So my lout is going to dine in his smallclothes,” Anisha teased, sliding a thick slice of bread onto his plate. “Hmm.”

  “I’m afraid Horsham hadn’t Janet’s foresight,” he said, taking up his glass in mock salute. “Or perhaps he harbored a secret hope I’d take pneumonia and die quietly in some roadside ditch.”

  “Alas, here’s to poor Horsham.” Anisha touched the brim of her glass to his with a sharp, ringing sound. “For he’s about to find himself sadly disillusioned. If your years in the French Foreign Legion and being twice tossed in prison didn’t kill you, I rather doubt the Essex damp will do it.”

  He laughed and began to eat, quietly watching her.

  As usual, Anisha picked at her food. The hour being early, a proper dinner was not ready, but they managed well enough with the warm chicken and a surprisingly good wine. The aftereffects of his absinthe having passed, Rance was hungry enough—and still soldier enough—that it scarcely mattered, but throughout their near-silent meal, he wondered if he should order something special for her.

  “All jests about poor Horsham aside, however,” she finally said, severing his musings, “you do give the impression of being invincible.”

  He finished chewing. “Invincible, eh?”

  She propped her chin on her hands and studied him. “Not that I don’t worry for you, mind,” she mused. “I do, Rance, all the time. But out of all of them, it is you who has always seemed so solid and indestructible.”

  “Ah, Nish,” he said. “No one is.”

  But she was speaking, he knew, of the Fraternitas—primarily of Geoff and her elder brother. They had been nearly inseparable, the three of them, for a great many years now.

  And yet Anisha very nearly had separated him from Geoff, for they’d all but come to blows. She likely would separate him from Ruthveyn, before all was said and done, though none of it was her doing. Still, her brother would likely return from India knowing the truth; that his best friend had gone back on what was practically a blood oath. He would have tolerated the union, perhaps, had Rance’s name been cleared—but it had not.

  Geoff, at least, was happy now.

  Rance set his glass down. “I goaded him, you know,” he said, staring hard at the scarred tabletop. “Like some green stripling, I just . . . pushed him.”

  Anisha looked up from a forkful of peas. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Geoff.” He looked up but found himself unable to hold her gaze. “That night in the temple—the night we were supposed to initiate Miss de Rohan—I goaded him into courting you. He said if I didn’t have the guts to do it, he did. Does that sound . . . invincible? Because I was gutless. I told him—” He hesitated.

  “What?” she softly urged.

  He shook his head. “I told him, Nish, you were like a sister to me,” he said after a moment had passed. “And that’s not true. It never has been. I just thought . . . I thought, Nish, that Geoff would look after you and the boys as you deserve. That he would be more of a gentleman than I could ever be, and that Ruthveyn would be happy. But you didn’t deserve to be saddled with Geoff. Because you were right. He hadn’t any passion for you.”

  She stared at him across the table for a time. “And do you, Rance?” she finally asked. “Do you have a passion for me?”

  “Oh, aye,” he whispered, his voice oddly breaking.

  Passion a thousand times over.

  The sort of passion, he was increasingly certain, that never died.

  But he made no move toward her, nor did she seem to expect it. Only the storm raging beyond the windows broke the silence.

  “Well,” she finally said, “I have a feeling we shall come to a point on that one soon enough.”

  “Aye?” Grimly, he studied her. “How so?”

  Anisha picked up her glass and swirled her wine about in the bowl. “I feel as if Mr. Kemble has pointed us to water after a long walk in the desert,” she finally answered, her voice pensive. “You won’t believe me, of course, but I see a sort of—oh, call it closure—drawing near.”

  “Closure?”

  Her gaze had turned inward. “Your stars,” she said. “A great change is coming. And with it no small amount of danger.”

  “Anisha,” he said warningly.

  She shrugged and set her glass down. “Now is a time of grave risk and great opportunity,” she said more certainly. “Jyotish shows us the path, Rance, and in this, the stars are clear. You must not move with your usual haste. Promise me—” Here, her voice caught, belying her calm. “Promise me, Rance, that you will set every foot with care along this path. That you will not let your temper or your impatience get the better of you as you finish these things Mr. Kemble has set in motion.”

  He could sense her disquiet. “Anisha, love,” he said, holding out his arms. “Come here.”

  She rose and circled the old table. Rance turned sideways on the settle, leaning back against what passed for an arm. Anisha sat down, and against his better judgment, he pulled her to his chest.

  “I promise,” he said, planting a kiss atop her head, “that I will set every foot with care.”

  She settled her head on his shoulder. “Thank you,” she said softly.

  He pressed his lips to her hair again and laid his hand over her heart, as he had done the night they’d made love. Holding her felt so disconcertingly right; it brought him a kind of quiet joy that tugged at him in a way he couldn’t quite put words to. And it was that yearning—that half seeking a pure and perfect whole—which had drawn him, solitary and stoic, into her orbit, beginning with the day he’d burst into that tiny cabin to flirt and to tease and to carry her home to her brother.

  But that had been before he’d fully comprehended the risk. Before the realization had come to him, sharp as a newly forged blade: There were some women with whom a man dared not flirt.

  Or in his case, one woman.

  He drew a deep breath and let it out again. “Tell me, Anisha,” he said quietly, “about . . . that thing—that Hindu notion you and Ruthveyn sometimes argue about. Karma, is it?”

  She lifted her head and looked up at him for an instant, as if to see if he was serious. Thunder rumbled again in the distance, and rain suddenly clattered across the windows like a fistful of birdshot. Disdaining the temptation her bare legs might present, Anisha sat up, absently crossing and tucking them beneath her.

  “Karma is a common enough concept,” she finally answered. “You would find similarities to the passage in Galatians which says—”

  “Aye, ‘Be not deceived, for God is not mocked’?” he quoted. “I remember you flinging that at your brother once in the heat of some argument.”

  “Yes, for it goes on to explain that, ‘For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,’ ” she continued. “ ‘For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.’ The Upanishads—the ancient Vedic scriptures�
�contain a very similar passage.”

  “So karma is the way to everlasting life?” he murmured. “I thought it was something about evil deeds following you around forever.”

  “It’s both, in a way.” For a moment, it was as if she struggled to find the words. “In my mother’s world, karma is the belief that one’s deeds determine who we can become in the next life. One should strive to do good—to be good—not just in one’s acts but in one’s thoughts as well. And in this way, from one life to the next, one moves to a higher and higher plane of existence—samsara—until one reaches moksha, a oneness with God, and the end of the cycle of rebirth.”

  Rance gave a grunt of understanding. “So I’ll be trapped on this mortal coil for all eternity.”

  She reached out to set a hand over his. “It’s not like that,” she said. “No one is trapped, save by his own choice or his own recalcitrance. Even the most evil person can change, can strive for dharma—the path of righteousness—and can find grace through devotion. And Rance, you are so far from evil . . .” She stopped, and shook her head. “Why are we even having this odd discussion? Does it have something to do with what Mr. Kemble said about Sir Arthur and Lord Percy?”

  Rance shrugged, his shoulder scrubbing the back of the settle. “I guess I can’t escape the sense that I did, in a twisted way, cause Percy’s death.”

  “And because Percy is dead, you deserve no happiness?” she suggested. “That’s rubbish, all of it.”

  “But he wasn’t a bad sort.” His eyes held hers grimly. “And admit it, Anisha—I was a cheat. Sutherland has always said—and quite rightly—that I had no business at a gaming table. I had an advantage over those fellows, many of them. Because I could so often sense their emotions; their fear, their elation, even their propensity for taking risks—”

  “Which is not the same as seeing their cards, Rance.”

  “Pretty damned close,” he said, “especially after you play with a fellow for a while, as I had with Percy. But I was so . . . afraid.”

  “Afraid how?”

  “Afraid of becoming like my mother, I think,” he quietly admitted. “Afraid of madness.”

  Anisha’s gaze turned inward. “When Raju was young, I remember Papa once warning Mamma that, absent a strong will, a strong Gift could madden a person,” she said. “I think that’s why Papa was so hard on him—to toughen his will. To protect him.”

  “But when you’re young, how do you know if you’re strong enough? Or if fate will bring you to your knees?” He opened one hand plaintively. “To me, it seemed best not to think of it. To just deny whatever gifts I possessed—even to myself.”

  “And you were so young,” Anisha murmured.

  He nodded. “But what I did not realize then was that whatever skill I had—call it the Gift, or just instinct—it was nothing like hers, nor was it ever going to be,” he whispered. “Hers slowly consumed her with grief. But my going to prison—ah, that was the grief that ended her.”

  “Yes, Raju said—” Sympathy flashing across her face, Anisha reached out to tuck a curl behind his ear. “He said Lady Lazonby died by her own hand.”

  Rance felt his fist clench involuntarily. “It’s not commonly known,” he said. “But aye, she was in a dark place, and I was the last straw. As to me . . . well, I cheated those men. I cheated Percy. I didn’t kill him—but why can’t I escape the feeling that I did, and that what I’m reaping now is karma?”

  Anisha didn’t answer but instead sat pensively for a time, one hand resting over his own, the warmth oddly comforting. After a few moments, she unfolded herself languidly and rose to pour more wine. Pressing a glass into his hands, she drifted to the narrow casement window overlooking the orchard.

  Outside, water still rattled in the gutters and poured down the glass. The storm was vicious now, lightning splintering the sky as it crept ever closer. He watched Anisha quietly as she stood there, lithe and beautiful in the firelight, and wondered what she was thinking.

  Most probably she was wishing she hadn’t come on this dreadful journey; that she could have been spared the ordeal of listening to him whine. Damn it, he never whined. Always, he had borne his sins and his grief in silence. And yet there had always been something about Anisha that tempted him to loosen his tongue—and his heart.

  He should have seen it coming, he supposed. One could not maintain so close a friendship as they had without being ultimately drawn into that deepest of the intimacies; intimacies which had little to do with the bedchamber and everything to do with the soul.

  It was easy to fall into bed with a woman. It was hard to confess the nagging uncertainties and harsh truths that haunted a man in the wee hours of the night when sleep would not come and circumstance compelled him to look back at what he’d made of his life.

  Except with Anisha, it was not hard.

  And that, he supposed, was the most telling truth of all.

  She finished her wine slowly, her gaze still scanning the heavens, as if she saw past the raging storm. Perhaps she did. He had learned not to doubt her. The glass empty, Anisha set it on the windowsill. Suddenly, there came at once a frightful, splintering ka-crack! ka-boom! Loud as cannon fire, it lit the room, washing her in a ghostly glow that illuminated even the orchard far beyond.

  “Come away from the glass, love,” he said, holding out his hand.

  But it was as if she did not hear him. Instead, Anisha set her hand lightly to one of the leaded diamonds, as though she might reach through the pane for something far beyond.

  “Nish?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  For a moment, he thought she mightn’t answer.

  “I was thinking of Mamma,” she finally answered, her voice oddly flat. “It was her favorite thing, a purifying storm at nightfall. She always said it was the earth purging itself to breath free again.”

  He smiled. “Von Althausen says it’s just releasing ozone,” he said, “whatever that is.”

  “Oh, your brother Savant will not explain this one with his beakers and his books,” said Anisha certainly. “This has to do with the movement of the heavens. The timing of it, the lucidity the storm brings, the formations of the stars that precipitate it—and all of it taken together has meaning for you, Rance. The clarity you seek draws near. I am increasingly sure of it.”

  As if he’d willed it, every hair on his neck prickled. “And what good will clarity do me if you’re struck dead?” he said, already exploding off the settle.

  He was across the room in three strides, yanking Anisha from the glass and hurling her to the floor. Lightning split the heavens like the hand of God; an awful, cracking noise that reverberated to the rafters. From just beyond the window came the loud splintering of a tree cleaved apart. Thunder rolled overhead, seemingly into infinity, until at last quiet settled in again, broken only by the spatter of rain on the glass.

  “Good God!” Pinned over her on the floor, he couldn’t move for a moment. “Bloody hell, that was close,” he said, rolling away. “Nish, you all right?”

  “Y-Yes.” Anisha levered up onto one elbow. “Did it hit?”

  “Aye, too bloody close for me,” he said. “I think the downspout carried it off—into that near apple tree, by the sound of it.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He cupped her face with one hand, but despite the fright, he could see she had that vague look in her eyes; the one he so often saw in Ruthveyn when his defenses were down and fatigue had begun to wear away his control. A part of her was still in the heavens, pondering what was to come. It was nothing to do with the Gift—not as Rance knew it. It was the mystic in them; that part of their mother they so rarely gave words to.

  He rolled onto his feet, still shaken, and helped her from the floor. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  “No, no,” she said. “But I had my hand on the leaded window, didn’t I? The metal—how foolish!—but I was thinking of Mamma. Of what she might advise, were she here.”

  Rance was still sha
ken. The strike had been far too close for his comfort. He did not say so but instead lightly kissed her nose, then drew her back to the settle. Anisha, however, did not sit.

  Instead she began to pace back and forth by the table.

  “Here is the thing, Rance, my mother would advise,” she finally said. “If you truly think you have wronged Percy, then you have. The heart knows the mind’s will, no matter how subtle, or almost unintentional, it may be. And so you must begin to seek dharma. You must negate your bad deeds with good ones.”

  She was speaking, he thought, of something specific. He followed her to the hearth. “I can try,” he answered. “Go on.”

  She stopped and set one hand on the mantel. “I think you must avenge his death to make this right,” she said. “You must find the man who killed him—not just for yourself but for everyone whose life this evil has touched. But you must seek justice. Not a blood vengeance.”

  He looked at her incredulously. “So I should . . . what, Nish?” he asked. “Resist the urge to throttle the fellow and instead haul him off to the magistrate for a fair trial? That’s a damned sight more than I ever got.”

  “But that’s what dharma is, you see,” she said. “The path of righteous living is not the easy path, or even the path according to some moldering religious tome. It is the path according to the universal laws—sometimes even the laws of man—the things that bring happiness and peace to the mortal world.”

  He reached out and slicked a hand down her hair. “Nish,” he said quietly, “I have lived so hard for so long, I wouldn’t know a righteous path if it jumped up and bit me in the arse.”

  “Yes. You would.” With a muted smile, Anisha set her cheek to his shoulder and set a hand over his heart. “You would know it here. You are going to learn something important when you go to Brighton. That is the first leg of your path.”

  He laughed. “Packing me off to Brighton, are you?”

  “We both know you’ve been planning to go ever since we left Mr. Kemble.” But there was no accusation in her voice. “And now fate is with you. When you go, you will find this man, this Mr. Hedge. You will learn the truth, or something near it. And then you will do the honorable thing. I am sure of it.”