“How do you know?”
“Leave now.”
Ella pressed her elbows to her sides. “I know he will want to see me.”
Bigun shook his head. “I know he will not.”
Ella gulped, and breathed through her mouth. “Ask him.”
“No.”
“He will be angry if he discovers I was here and you didn’t tell him.”
“He will not discover.”
Nearby, jeweled eyes glinted in the two heads of a green jade creature. Ella stepped away—and bumped into an ivory dragon with a long, lolling gold tongue.
Candlelight gleamed on Bigun’s gaunt features. “My master cannot receive you,” he said. “Leave, please.”
A subtle aroma reached her nose. Burning flowers? Her eyes stung. “You don’t understand, Mr. Bigun. As I told you the other day, it is imperative that I see Saber.”
“Bigun.”
“Sorry. As I said the other—”
“I do not remember another day.”
Ella opened her mouth—and promptly closed it again. “Leave. If you please. Do not return. Do not trouble my master further.”
She was not alone in feeling desperate tonight. “What’s afoot here?” Beneath the servant’s cold exterior Ella felt deep anxiety. “Is something wrong—with Saber?”
He didn’t answer.
There was something wrong with him. “Tell me.” Her chest grew tight. “He is ill. That’s it, isn’t it? He’s ill and doesn’t want me to know.”
Bigun’s face lost all expression. “I want to go to him, please.”
“That is not possible. Not wise. Out of the question. My master is quite himself. He will not see you.”
Quite himself. He had not been himself since he’d left her in Cornwall four years earlier. She’d tried and tried to forget him, but then she’d discovered he was staying near her Scottish home at Castle Kirkcaldy—so near that he could have come to her within an hour.
He had not come, so she had gone to him.
On that occasion she’d managed to get into his presence, though only for a short time. He had sent her away. But he had been recovering from a battle injury and she’d been certain he did not want to burden her. She’d also been certain he would seek her out once he was whole again.
He was whole again. Ella had seen him at Sibley’s. Still he had not come to her. He had walked away. She drew herself up and said, “Is he alone?” Or with the famous Countess Perruche?
Bigun’s eyelids lowered briefly. His mouth drew straight. “I should not have spoken of my master’s club to you.”
“I thought you were worried about him. I felt that. You saw that I cared for him and you wanted me to see him, didn’t you?”
“He is alone.”
“You never answer my questions directly, Mr. Bigun.”
“Bigun.”
“Yes, as you say. I am in serious trouble. That is, I may be in serious trouble. And I am certain Saber would wish to know. He once promised me he would always come to my aid if I needed him. I need him now.”
Bigun’s brow furrowed.
Trembling, Ella struggled to open her reticule. Her fingers caught in the ribbon rosettes at the closure. By the time she tugged a folded piece of paper into view she was close to tears. “Please, Bigun,” she implored. “If you doubt that Saber would come to my aid, take this to him. When he reads it, he will not turn me away.”
With another of his unexpected grabs, Bigun snatched the note.
Ella took a step toward him. “You’ll give it to him? Now?”
He turned away and opened the door. “My master sleeps.”
“I beg you to do this. If you will not, I don’t know what I shall do.”
With his back to her and his head bowed, Bigun paused.
“Please will you…?”
“Remain here.”
He left, closing the door firmly behind him.
Relief and hope lightened Ella’s head. She reached out to steady herself—and grasped the ivory elephant’s cold, golden tongue.
Sunlight shot along curved blades.
His horse reared. All around him horses reared and screamed. And men screamed. He fought his mount. Down. Down. “Down. Get down! Everyone, retreat!”
Nigel Brannington’s horse smashed into Saber’s. “Hold on, Nigel. Hold—” Nigel didn’t hear him, would never hear him again. His remaining blue eye saw nothing. The rest was blood.
Hot, so hot. Bound. Hot and bound. Twisting against his bonds. Sweat and blood. All, sweat and blood. He had to be free, to help them. His company. He must save them.
“Sir! Sir, help!” a soldier shouted to him, a soldier thrown from his horse.
“Mount and ride, boy, ride. Go! Go! Go!”
Little more than a child.
A blade sang overhead, swept this way and that, swept down toward the child soldier.
Saber ran through the next tribesman to come at him, withdrew his sword, and leaned to sweep up the boy. “Hold on. Keep your head down.”
He rode with the boy, made it safely from the tangle of whooping men protecting their barren Indian hill, made it out of the sea of blood and flesh and terror.
The company was his. They had expected no trouble, simply a quiet reconnaissance of the area. He must go back for them. Not one more must be lost.
Nigel Brannington was already lost. Many were lost.
He must go back. Bound. Twisted in bonds and held down. Sweat. So hot. “Go back!”
Sweat ran over his horse’s hide. Lather dripped from the mud-spattered animal—lather and mud, and blood. Foam flew from its mouth. The whites of great, frightened eyes rolled upward.
Saber spurred the beast on, away from the edges of the safe village where he’d quickly left the boy.
He had led his unsuspecting men toward death. “Faster.” He was strong. He would not die because he was strong, and he must save the rest.
Blowing hard, the horse crested a hill and Saber saw the fray again. “On. Faster!” The animal’s hoofs drummed. They beat the sun-baked ground. They hammered. They pounded.
Bound by twisted bonds. Bonds that raked his damp skin. Holding him down. Stopping him from saving them. His men. “Silence! I’ve got to have silence! Stop! Stop, I tell you!”
Saber’s own shout forced his eyes open.
Pounding, pounding. The hoofs.
He flung himself to the edge of his bed and thrust his feet to the bare wooden floor. It was always so. The sheets wound about his body, the screams—then his feet to the cold floor. No carpet, so that the floor would be cold—cold enough to shock him to consciousness.
Again, it had happened again.
He sagged to sit on the bed and let his head hang forward. How many times had he ridden into the madness that day and managed, with strength that could not have been his own alone, to help another of his men to safety? Not enough times. He had not saved them all.
Many had died, too many, and it was his fault.
Would it never be over?
The crazed episodes came more frequently now.
A sharp, rapping sound almost stopped his thundering heart. Rapping at the door, God help him. The black thing he had become did not even recognize a knock at the door for what it was.
“Go away,” he called.
Instantly the door opened and Bigun slipped inside. He closed the door firmly and turned the key in the lock.
“What is it?” Saber asked. His hair clung damply to his neck. Chilled by the icy cooling of sweat, his naked body shook. “Speak up, Bigun. What’s the meaning of this intrusion? And why the locked door?” Had the faithful servant decided to turn on his troubled master—to become his jailer?
“You will drink, my lord,” Bigun said. He carried a candle, and this he set beside the bed while he poured water from a pitcher into a glass. “Drink, my lord.”
Saber pushed back his hair and took the glass. The water bathed his parched throat, and he gulped thirstily.
&nb
sp; Bigun refilled the glass. “I regret I took so long to hear you. I was distracted by an event below.” He moistened a cloth and pressed it to Saber’s brow.
Saber closed his eyes. “No matter.”
They had first met on the ship back to England. The dour Indian had tended the English lord in his almost constant delirium. At his own request, once ashore Saber had been transferred to Devlin North’s care. It had been some months before Saber encountered Bigun again. On that occasion he’d saved Bigun from a crippling penance.
Coincidence had placed Saber on the same ship for his second trip to India. Bigun, too, was aboard, but this time another Englishman recognized the Indian as a fugitive from justice. Some matter of filching leftover food from the English officer’s kitchens for beggars at the door. Evidently the paltry theft and the devastating punishment to which Bigun had been sentenced was all that concerned the pompous officer.
Bigun’s wrist had been upon a block, a sword raised to ensure payment for crusts, when Saber intervened. Cousin to a duke, an earl in his own right, Saber’s rank had “persuaded” the other Englishman to relent. Afterward the Indian insisted he must spend the rest of his life repaying the debt.
He looked critically at Saber now. “You will sicken, my lord,” he said, wringing out the cloth. “Let me help you dress.”
Saber shook his head. Still naked, he stretched out on the mattress and rested the back of a forearm over his eyes. He preferred to sleep without clothes—when he slept.
“There was the event,” Bigun said.
“Hmm?” The answer might be to abandon sleep entirely. Only in his sleep did the specters rise.
Bigun cleared his throat. “The event. Below.”
Saber slid his arm to the pillow above his head. “What are you talking about, man? Event below? Another of your damnable riddles.”
The Indian drew himself up to his full, diminutive height. “A visitor.”
“A visitor?” Saber peered through the dim light. “At… what? Two in the morning?”
“Well past four. Now.”
Past four? Saber pushed to his elbows. “The devil you say. Who is it?”
Silently, Bigun produced a folded sheet of paper from a pocket in his tunic.
Glancing from his servant to the paper, Saber took it and turned on his side. A flood of sickness swept through him and he fell back.
“My lord!” Anxiety raised Bigun’s voice.
“It’s nothing. It passes—when the memory passes.” There were few secrets between master and servant. Bigun had learned the nature of Saber’s demons when he’d first tended him.
Saber rose to an elbow again, unfolded the paper, and held it beneath the candle:
“My dearest Saber,” he read. “I will not ask you to forgive my little masquerade last night. You would not agree to see me, so I found a way to see you without your permission.”
He arched his neck backward. “Bigun, do not tell me there is a female somewhere in this house—other than our incomparable housekeeper?”
Bigun shuffled his feet and said nothing.
Saber moistened his dry lips. “I see. There is another female in this house.”
He read on: “Once you said you were my friend. You told me you would never deny me if I was in trouble. I am in trouble, Saber. I need you.”
He made a fist on his thigh. Yes, he had told her he would never deny her, but that had been when he was still a whole man, when he had dreamed of making her his, his beautiful bride—his wife, the mother of his children.
All gone.
“My lord?” Bigun said tentatively.
Saber grunted and continued reading: “Tomorrow evening there is a soiree at the Eagletons’. No doubt you are also invited. Please relent from the solitary sentence you have assigned yourself—and me—and come. Please, Saber. But first, will you see me now? Just for a moment? So that I may look upon you and know peace? With affection, Ella.”
“My God!” Sweat broke upon his brow again. “Get rid of her! Do as I tell you, at once.”
“She is lovely. Lovely. Young. Serious, I believe.”
“Serious, yes,” he whispered through gritted teeth. “Serious, determined, willful, outrageous—trusting, gentle—and wasting her time on me.”
“You could spare her a few minutes.”
“No. How did she get here?”
“By carriage.”
“And alone?”
Bigun sighed. “Alone.”
“Send her home. Instruct her coachman to protect her at all costs. She should not be abroad at such an hour. What can Struan and Justine be about? First she appears at Sibley’s to torment me … now this. She should be in the safety of her parents’ home, not wandering in the night.”
“Hmm. She insists she must talk to you.”
Saber threw wide his arms. “Look at me. Look, Bigun. Soaked with my own sweat. Wild. A sick man.”
“You, my lord,” Bigun said very solemnly, “are a very strong, fit man.”
“Not in my mind! I can never be free of the sickness in my mind. How could I ever subject a sweet female to such horror as living with me would represent?”
“You would like to live with her?”
“I—” Saber turned facedown on his bed. He let the note drift from his fingers. “I would like not to discuss this matter.”
“Perhaps she would help. Mend you, my lord. Heal you.”
“I am sick of soul,” Saber said into the pillow. “A man with a sick soul can never have anything to offer—and he can never be healed.”
“My lord—”
Tapping at the door silenced Bigun.
Saber turned his face in the direction of the tapping. “Saber? Are you in there?”
“I cannot bear it,” he muttered. “Saber, it’s me, Ella. Can you hear me?”
He shook his head, unable to trust his voice. “I know you are there,” she said, emotion trembling in every word. “Please could we talk? Please would you tell me what I’ve done wrong?”
He buried his face. To want. To want and to be able to have, yet to know the having would be utterly wrong…Torment.
“My lord?” Bigun said beside Saber’s ear. “It grows almost morning.”
“Go away,” Saber muttered into the pillow. He raised his face and shouted, “Go away, Ella. Forget the past. Go.”
“Saber, please—”
“Leave this house at once. Cease your persecution of me. I never wish to see you again.”
He heard her cry out, a strangled, wounded sound that faded to rasping sobs. Then her retreating footsteps followed.
“You lied to me, Saber,” she gasped through her tears. “You said you loved me. I was too young. I am not too young now, but you do not love me now.”
Her feet hit the stairs in quick succession.
Saber looked up at Bigun. “See to it that she gains her coach safely.”
Bigun’s face took on the haughty expression he saved for moments of extreme disapproval. “I wash my hands of this.”
“Do as I request,” Saber roared. “Saber!” Ella’s voice reached him from the vestibule. “Today Papa is to see a man who wishes to ask for my hand. A stranger. I do not want this man.”
He rose and approached the door, then remembered his nakedness. Blindly, he sought around for something to cover himself with. “Give me a robe,” he said, yanking the door open. “I must speak to her. She must see that what she remembers was only a childish infatuation that could not last.”
Bigun rummaged in a huge ebony wardrobe and brought forth a black silk robe.
“Hurry,” Saber urged. A draft rose from the floor below. She had opened the door.
“I will die rather than be given to a stranger I do not love,” Ella called to him in her broken voice.
He struggled into the robe and tied the sash. Without bothering with shoes, he threw the door wide and started for the stairs.
“I love you, Saber. I’ll never love another.”
The
front door slammed shut.
He ran downstairs and outside into the stinging early-morning air.
Her coach drew away from the flagway. “Ella!”
The shades at the carriage windows were drawn down. She neither saw nor heard him. Too late. It had been too late even before they met.
“Ella,” he murmured. “My beloved Ella.”
Chapter Three
No man was good enough for his daughter. Struan, Viscount Hunsingore, turned the pages of a document his solicitor had left for signature that morning.
A calm manner would serve him well in the days to come. And an unruffled air would be mandatory in such matters as dealing with the callers he was expecting today. Yes, an air of nonchalant control.
He threw down his pen. He could not be dispassionate where Ella was concerned. “Absolutely not! No!”
“My lord?”
Startled, Struan looked up to see Crabley, the Hanover Square butler, standing before the mahogany desk. “I didn’t hear you enter,” he said, more sharply than he intended.
“I did knock, my lord.”
“Are they here?”
“They, my lord?” Crabley’s small, protruding black eyes magnified the question conveyed by his words.
Struan pushed to his feet and advanced around his desk. This study usually brought him peace and pleasure. He felt neither today. “They, Crabley. The people I told you were calling on me this afternoon.”
“It is not yet eleven, my lord.” Doughy of complexion, his width and height similar, the butler had always performed his duties impeccably. Both Struan and his older brother, Arran, Marquess of Stonehaven, found the servant’s manner irritating, but his loyalty and scrupulous attention to detail made him invaluable.
Struan eyed the man speculatively. “Are you a man of passion, Crabley?” There, let him come up with a suitably butlerlike response to that!
Crabley pushed out his lips and wriggled his snub nose as if some thought were necessary. “Considerable passion,” he said without inflection. “Yes, my lord, I am a very passionate man. I would protect those I serve to the death … if such an extraordinary measure should prove necessary. Is that what you meant, my lord?”
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