by Liz Carlyle
“No, no.” Anisha let her shoulders sag; it was as she had expected. Too hard to explain. Too hard, even, for her to fully comprehend. How did someone become so tormented and unhappy?
“You are not mad,” she finally said. “Far from it. But you have let your anger and your determination and your denial of joy push you past rational thought. And if you continue on as you are, Mrs. Ashton, you could lose your moral compass entirely. Is this what you wish?”
“I think you are mad.” The woman trembled with rage now.
Anisha sat calmly. “Everyone can change, Mrs. Ashton,” she said quietly. “Shall I tell you how? For you, it can be done by focusing on your heart line and—”
“No, I should sooner tell you something,” she interjected, sweeping to her feet in a rustle of muslin and petticoats. “Go. To. Hell.”
Anisha felt a cold sense of fatalism now. “In my experience, we often make our own hell on this earth,” she replied. “Here is what it comes down to, Mrs. Ashton. You must choose a hand. Right? Or left? You must choose a side. Darkness? Or light? You cannot continue in pain as you are, half of you yearning for the goodness of your better self, and half of you caught in your own bitterness. I warn you out of genuine concern, and nothing more.”
“The only thing I’m choosing is to walk out of here.” Mrs. Ashton had already thrown back the tent flaps. “I know quite well what I’m about. As to grim warnings, let me share one with you—a good, Christian adage, too, not some half-baked Hindu balderdash dreamt up in a cloud of smoke and herbs.”
“Pray go ahead,” said Anisha evenly. “I try to keep an open mind.”
“Fine, then,” she said over her shoulder as she pushed past her startled friends. “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas! Now put that in your hookah and smoke it, Lady Anisha Stafford.”
Mouth agape, Mrs. Drummond stepped back inside the flaps. Mrs. Howe had clapped a hand over her mouth. For a long moment, they simply stared after their coworker, who was marching away, ramrod stiff, hands fisted, her skirts swishing over the grass at a rapidly increasing pace.
“My heavens!” Mrs. Howe finally said. “What’s got into Mrs. Ashton?”
Anisha lifted her gaze to meet Mrs. Howe’s. “I collect,” she said quietly, “that the lady did not wish her fortune told after all.”
Rance sat slumped on the well-cushioned banquette of his first-class compartment, holding the unread newspaper he’d purchased while anxiously pacing Brighton Station. His gaze was focused instead on the rolling green Surrey countryside beyond the spitting rain, but his mind—at least half of it—was still in Mrs. Ford’s overgrown garden.
At the thought, his right hand curled involuntarily into the lush upholstery, as if it might, even now, choke the truth out of Alfred Hedge. But he had got as much as he ever would, he knew, out of that venal son of a bitch. And Hedge was going on to his great reward still clutching his secrets—if not today, then very soon indeed. There would be no vengeance on this earth, and in that, Rance could not help but feel cheated.
Nonetheless, he’d promised Anisha he would seek justice, not vengeance, and it was she who lay at the forefront of his mind. Anisha, and the strange sensations—the strange certainty—which even now seemed to connect him to her. Even as he hastened back to London, having departed in such haste that he’d not stopped to collect his belongings, he could not put away the sense of urgency—the near panic—that was driving him back to her.
Just then, however, the train lurched, the clackity-clack-clack slowing abruptly in a shriek of brakes. Thrown nearly off his seat, Rance seized hold of the door until the lugging of the train halted. Panic rising, he stood and craned his neck to look down the tracks.
The high brick arch of the Merstham tunnel stared back at him from its chalky outcropping, but Rance could not quite see the black entrance below that swallowed up the tracks.
From somewhere in the depths of the carriage behind him, he heard a door creak open, and in a moment a porter came trudging past in the mist, his footsteps crunching in the loose gravel below.
A moment later he came back again, shoulders slumping.
Rance flung open his door and looked down at the fellow. “What the devil is holding us up?” he demanded.
The porter blinked up at him through the mist. “Cows,” he said.
“Cows?” said Rance. “How the devil did cows get up this narrow passage?”
“Only the devil would know,” said the porter somewhat impertinently. “But cows there be, and they must be coaxed back down the line, for they cannot very well go through now, can they?”
“Well, for God’s sake, man!” Rance said. “Go and coax! We cannot simply sit here.”
“Well, I’ve got to get me boots on, don’t I?” said the fellow.
“Oh, a fashion plate for a porter!” said Rance, flinging the door wider. “God save us. I’ll see to the bloody cows myself.”
“Oh, sir,” said the fellow, flinging up a hand. “I wouldn’t!”
But it was too late. Rance had leapt down onto the gravel, and squarely into a pile of warm manure, splattering it high. “Bloody hell!” he gritted.
The porter squawked and leapt back—but not quickly enough. “Damn and blast,” said the fellow, fumbling in his massive pocket. “Another accursed Monday!”
Rance looked up from his fouled boots to see the poor chap wiping manure off his cheek. “Monday?”
His gaze caught Rance’s, accusing. “It’s always a Monday something goes arse over teakettle!” he grumbled, wiping down his coat sleeve. “Loose track last month. Falling rocks a fortnight past. Why, Monday last, a woman nearly gave birth rolling into Brighton Station! And if you think manure is a mess—well, at any rate, seems I oughtn’t trouble myself to get out of bed a’ Monday.”
But Rance stood frozen, stock-still on the track’s graveled verge.
The fellow was right. In all the haze of thwarted hope and long-denied passion, Rance had lost track of days. But this was Monday.
And suddenly the impetus behind his awful sense of urgency came clear. Dear God. It was Monday. He had to get back to London. And he had to do it now.
“Come along,” he gritted, hitching the fellow by the arm. “We are moving those cows—and by God, we’re doing it this instant, never mind the damned boots.”
Anisha was inordinately relieved when, at long last, Lady Leeton’s footmen came to strike down the gaudy tent and haul the furnishings away. Along the grassy promenade, the stalls were being disassembled, too, and what remained of the Leetons’ guests had again shifted to the refreshment tent for afternoon tea.
“Here’s the last of it,” Sir Wilfred declared, gathering up the poles.
Anisha turned to the young servant who was loading. “Thank you,” she said as he piled the chairs onto a barrow. “Is the whole of your stables filled with tents and lumber?”
“Just the east block,” said Sir Wilfred grimly. “Even the bandstand comes apart. Hannah sold half my stable to make room for the lot.”
Anisha smiled. “As you say, she is determined.”
He laughed and, as the servant pushed the barrow away, Anisha raised a hand to her eyes, for unlike the graying south, the northerly sky was still bright with sunshine. Far across the lawns, she could see Lady Leeton walking toward the stables alongside her butler, and gesturing instructively at various tents and stalls, as if to say which should be taken down first.
“Pardon me,” said Leeton grimly, “but I’d best catch up with Hannah and do my part.”
Anisha felt suddenly grateful for a few moments of quiet. Glancing over her shoulder, she weighed returning to Madeleine and Lady Bessett in the refreshment tent, but the efficient Mrs. Day was presiding over tea, and Anisha had no wish to face Mrs. Ashton again.
She had not long to consider it, for Sir Wilfred nodded to his wife, turned, and started coming swiftly back along the path toward her, puffing, and red in the face.
“Hannah wishes to take you down
to her stillroom to see her father’s collection of herbals,” he said when he drew up beside her. “Will you give her ten minutes, then meet her at the house? I must help Potter direct the unloading.”
“Yes, of course,” said Anisha. “How kind.”
Leeton glanced over his shoulder at the house. “Best go round back to the kitchen garden,” he said. “The house is locked up, and all the staff out here.”
After gathering up her reticule, Anisha ambled her way along a shady path that meandered by the garden wall, hoping no one would see her. The long afternoon spent in the warmth of the tent, crowded in by too many people and surrounded by too much clamor, had left her drained.
In time, it was an easy matter to make her way through the formal parterres that flanked the house, and under the stone archway that gave onto the rear. Here the walled gardens continued, lower now, with one section given over to root crops, just beginning to flourish, the next to vegetables, and the final and smallest, to herbs.
Against the herb wall someone had left a pile of mud-caked garden tools, but Anisha was distracted from this minor nuisance by the long double row of fruit trees leading away from the house, at the end of which lay a sunken stone structure that appeared almost embraced by the earth and topped with a cupola—the dairy, perhaps, or a large icehouse. This bucolic prospect was made complete by a chaffinch perched in the nearest tree chortling peep-peep-chirrup! as if happy to have a visitor.
Shutting away the vision of Mrs. Ashton and her outrage, Anisha went perfectly still, drawing her breath slow and deep for a time, and willing away the day’s frustrations. For a few moments, she lost track of time, aware only of the soft grass beneath her feet, of the birdsong pouring over her, and of the scents of rich, fresh-turned soil. Aware only of God’s perfect and eternal strength that spurred such green, growing sweetness from the earth.
But thoughts of eternal strength brought her mind round to Rance again; to the utter happiness that seemed almost within her grasp. In moments such as this, it was a quiet joy to stop and remember the night of passion they had spent together, and the promise not yet fulfilled.
He loved her. He had always loved her. And she had known it; known it in that way which only two bound and fated souls could know. Moreover, they were at long last on the verge of accepting that fate. She almost resented having to come here. How much sweeter it would have been to have lingered, alone with her memories, in the serenity of her own garden.
After a time, however, feeling a little more at peace, she exhaled slowly, opened her eyes, and turned into the herb garden. Methodically, she began to examine Lady Leeton’s choices, going row by row. Like those of most English gardens, they were not especially exciting, or even useful. Nor were they as kempt as the Leetons’ showy public gardens, Anisha decided, bending to flick a beetle from a leaf of sweet marjoram.
Just then, the chaffinch went eerily still.
Anisha froze, her hand hovering. There came an odd breeze—the merest of sounds, as if the bird had flown too near her temple. A white, splintering light shot through her head, then vanished, ephemeral as the sound. She threw out a hand against the blackness and felt the soft earth rise up to meet her.
Anisha came awake to find herself floating. Floating flat atop a slab of ice that lay cold beneath her body, with the trickling sound of water echoing all around her.
A cave? A cold cave. Ice-cold pain had bored into her very marrow.
Fragments of memory rose up, whirling about her like a flock of startled finches. Mentally, she reached for one. It fluttered off again and was lost. She groaned, her consciousness melting into the ice.
When next she woke, it was to the sound of wood scraping over stone. There was a deathly chill beneath her cheek and her palms, and the tang of blood in her mouth.
She cracked one eye and saw a blur of sticks.
No, not sticks. Wooden legs. A dozen, it seemed. But the vision sharpened, then became three. A stool. And with it, two large, well-shod feet. Anisha opened the other eye and ran her tongue round her teeth, tasting blood.
“Tsk, tsk,” said a soft voice from above. “Coming round, are we?”
She tried to speak but couldn’t. The awful clank of metal striking stone rang out. A garden spade clattered in front of her face, the back smeared with blood.
“It would have been easier for us both, perhaps,” the voice went on, “had you never woken.”
She struggled to lift herself up and failed. Reality was returning, and with it a sick, terrible fear. She had been struck. The gentle voice was not gentle. Vaguely she knew she must run, and yet her limbs would not move.
Better to feign a stupor and gather her wits.
She let her lashes flutter shut and squinted through them. She lay not upon ice, she realized, but upon a white tiled floor. Recognition stirred. The little dairy beyond the trees. It had to be. There was the dank, soured scent of old milk in the air. And the gurgle of water. A spring, perhaps.
“Lazonby just couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie, could he?” The melancholy words echoed through the stone enclosure. “Good God, he had his freedom. What the devil does he want?”
Me, she thought vaguely. He wants me.
He’d wanted to be good enough; wanted his family’s honor back. Surely such devotion had not come to this? Anisha drew in a slow, ragged breath and vowed she would not let it.
Somehow, she rolled slightly onto her side and looked up into the bleak, blue eyes of Sir Wilfred Leeton. “You . . . you killed”— she whispered—“Lord Percy.”
He sat upon a three-legged milking stool, elbows on his knees and hands dangling as he leaned plaintively over her body. Only the bloody spade at his feet betrayed his vicious nature.
“I didn’t want to,” he said, whining a little through his nose. “But I needed rid of Arthur. I couldn’t quite kill him—we were mates of a fashion—but Arthur had to go. What choice did I have?”
“Arthur?” Anisha struggled to make sense of it. “Wh—Wh . . . ?”
Sir Wilfred sighed, dragging both hands through what was left of his hair. “Oh, she’d never have spared me a glance otherwise,” he said. “All that coin, ripe for the picking—and Arthur’s chits stubbed up over blood! You, of all people, will appreciate how foolish that is. Jewish gold, nabob gold—it all jingles the same in a chap’s pocket, eh? Though it does wear on a fellow, playing the doting husband to a fishwife.”
Somehow, she levered up onto one elbow. “You . . . you hated him,” she whispered.
Sir Wilfred’s blue eyes widened innocently. “Arthur? No! I just wanted him to run off to France. He said he planned to—promised it, really.”
“No, R—R—” Anisha surrendered, and let her head fall back onto the floor.
“Ah, Lazonby? No, no.” Suddenly, his voice turned inward. “Oh, it could gall a chap to see the ladies pant over him like bitches in heat,” he said. “And true, at that particular moment I could ill afford the nine hundred pounds I owed him. But it was the Black Horse boys that wanted rid of Lazonby.”
Vaguely, Anisha knew she had to keep him talking. “Why . . . ?” she managed, spittling blood.
Leeton lifted one shoulder. “They’d pegged him for some sort of sharper but couldn’t make out what,” he replied. “Had ’em worried. So they offered me what I direly needed—financing for the Athenian. And in return, I’d ensure Lazonby troubled them no more.”
Anisha tried to summon her strength, and set both hands flat to the icy floor. “For that . . . you would kill?” she rasped.
“Only Percy!” he countered, as if it had somehow been logical. “I mean, who knew Arthur would turn coward? And who’d have dreamt Lazonby would stand and fight? I even warned him—I told him to run, the damned fool.” Sir Wilfred looked down almost pitifully and shook his head. “And now I am going to have to let you go, Lady Anisha, much as it pains me.”
At first, she thought remorse had overcome him. But then he lifted his hand, gesturing with clear distaste
at something beyond her view, toward the sound of the gurgling water.
Then he licked his lips uncertainly. “Everyone will question, of course, why you wandered out here alone, but no one will question the tragedy of it,” he said, his words falling faster and faster. “A wet floor. A foot misplaced—and all too near the springbox. Admittedly not my best plan, but you’ve given me so little time, my dear. Those papers—good God—if I allow you to keep them . . . should Lazonby ever find them . . . there’ll be an avalanche of suspicion. And that damned George Kemble—oh, that wicked, meddling fellow will unravel my little clew quick as I draw breath . . . or tell Lazonby how to do it.”
It is too late, she wanted to say. You are undone, you craven dog.
Perhaps that would save her. “They . . . have seen,” she murmured, fighting the wish to close her eyes and sleep. “They know.”
“No, they don’t know.” His voice had taken on a strange edge. “They can’t—not yet—or you wouldn’t be here.”
Anisha shut her eyes and fought to remember who knew what. But she saw only a vision of Durga, the many-armed warrior-goddess, bearing her swords, her thunder, and her powerful retribution. Leeton had killed for money. Left Rance to hang for it like a common criminal. She imagined Durga lifting her thunderbolt and aiming it straight at Leeton’s visage. The image brought her courage—and a terrible thirst for vengeance.
The spade. The handle of the spade, she realized, was within her grasp, had she the strength to wield it. She slowly drew in her breath and tried to block the pain.
“A person can drown, Lady Anisha, in a quart of water,” Sir Wilfred murmured, “when incapacitated. Or held under. Did you know that?”
“Yes . . .” she whispered, rolling ever so slightly nearer.
And an infidel can die a thousand deaths.
“Do you see why I wish you had never woken? I’ve nothing against you—or even your race! Good Lord, I can see why Lazonby lusts after you. Even now, I must say, you’re a tempting little morsel.” He smacked his lips, then drew a hand down his face. “But I’m not, of course, depraved. Still, why did you have to dredge up those old notes of hand, my dear? And ask such vile questions?”