Rogue Grooms

by Amanda McCabe

  He smiled down at her, but she thought there was something sad and strange in his dark eyes. “Is something amiss?” she asked, sitting up straight.

  “No, of course not,” he answered. “I will always be your knight, Emily, I promise. No matter what. Do you believe me?”

  He sounded so very serious, so unlike her merry David. She felt a tiny pang of misgiving in her heart. “Of course I believe you. We are friends—we will always be friends.”

  “Yes. Here, I want to give you something.” He reached into a small pouch hung on a leather thong around his neck and pulled out a ring. He placed it on his palm and held it out to her.

  It glittered in the spring sunlight, beckoning to her. It was a circlet of nine stones—she recognized emerald, ruby, cat’s-eye, topaz, blue sapphire, pearl, coral, moon-stone, and diamond.

  Emily stared down at it, her lips parted with wonder. She knew it was the height of rudeness to gaze at something with one’s jaw agape, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. It was so very beautiful—more beautiful even than her mother’s diamond tiara, and more grand than anything Emily could hope to own before she was grown up.

  “Oh, David,” she breathed. “It is so lovely!”

  “It is the Navaratna,” he said, and pointed to each stone with his dark, slim finger. “The stones are for the nine heavenly bodies which rule our destiny—the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter. That makes seven. The others are the dragon’s head and tail—rahu and ketu. The empty, black spaces in the heavens.”

  Emily was mesmerized. “All that in one ring?”

  David smiled at her gently, and pressed the ring against her palm. “All that. It belonged to my mother. Before she died, she gave it into my keeping. Now, it is yours.”

  “Oh, no!” As greatly as Emily wanted to keep the ring—as tightly as her fingers longed to grasp it—she knew she could not. It would not be right. She knew how very much David loved his mother, Gayatri, Countess of Darlinghurst, who had died shortly after David and his family came to England. She knew how he must cherish anything his mother left behind. “You must not give this away, David. I can’t take it.”

  She tried to hand it back, but he refused, shaking his head and reaching out to fold her fingers about the ring. “You cannot refuse a gift. That would insult the giver. You wouldn’t want to insult me, would you, Em?”

  Insult David? As if she ever could! “Of course not.”

  “Then it is yours. It will protect you.”

  “Protect me?”

  “That is what my mother said. The heavens protect and bless us.” He took the ring and slid it onto her right index finger. It was too large, and slipped about, so Emily tightened her fist to hold it there. It was far too precious to risk losing. “Not that you will ever need protecting, fierce little Boudicca! You will always be able to take care of yourself.”

  Emily’s gaze shot from the ring to David’s dark, lean face. He had been behaving oddly all morning, ever since they met at the stream that divided their families’ estates, and just then he sounded so sad . . . “I will always need you, David!”

  “And I will always be your friend,” he answered quietly. “If you ever have need of me, send me the ring and I will be here. From the very ends of the earth, if need be.”

  “But why should I have to send the ring?” Emily cried in growing panic. She clutched onto his arm, holding close as if it was a lifeline. “You are just over at Combe Lodge!”

  “Em, please.” He took her hands in his, holding her away. “I vow I will always be there for you, no matter what. That is all I meant. We are friends always, are we not?”

  “Yes, of course!”

  “Then that is all that matters.” He pressed a quick kiss to her brow, and gave her a jaunty smile that was more like the David she knew. “Now, I must go home and help my father with some matters; I am sure your governess will be looking for you.”

  “Yes,” Emily agreed reluctantly. Miss Lynn would indeed be looking for her—it was almost time for their dreaded French lesson. Yet she so hated to leave this bright day, and David’s company, for the dusty school-room. “But I will see you later?”

  He nodded, yet would not meet her gaze. “Later, Em.”

  She gave him a fierce hug, and leaped up to dash back across the meadow. At the top of the hill, she turned back and waved. David still sat beneath their tree, watching her go.

  “Thank you for the ring, David!” she shouted. “I will always treasure it.”

  “You will not forget what I told you?” he called in return.

  “Never!” She gave him a final wave, and spun around to run toward Fair Oak.

  She would never forget.

  “Ah, David. You have said good-bye to young Lady Emily, then?”

  David had hoped to slip past his father for the time being, to go up to his chamber and finish his own packing in peace. He had a great deal to think about—a great deal to remember. But apparently that was not to be, as his father caught him walking by the half-open door of the library.

  David pushed the door open all the way and stepped into the dark, book-lined room. His mother’s black eyes, in the large portrait over the fireplace, watched him closely. “Yes. I told her good-bye.”

  “Excellent.” His father leaned over a crate and carefully placed a stack of books inside, tucking cushioning scraps of muslin about them. Soon, the crate would be added to the dozen others lining the walls. Never mind that the Indian humidity would wilt the pages of the books within weeks.

  Surely they would sink the ship with the weight of their possessions before they could even reach Calcutta, David thought wryly.

  “It has been so good of you to befriend the child, David,” his father continued. “It must be rather lonely for her, with only older brothers over at Fair Oak.”

  “It is good of her to be my friend, as well, Father,” David said, feeling strangely defensive at his father’s harmless words. Yet how could David explain to him—to anyone—the odd connection he felt to his Boudicca? She was very young, it was true, yet it seemed she held worlds of wisdom in her dark blue eyes. She rode and danced and laughed with great intensity, like no one else he knew, or had ever known. And the way she looked at him made him feel he could be strong and even merry, could laugh, when all he had felt was weakness and sadness for so long. “As you may have noticed, I have precious few friends here in England.”

  “Eh?” His father glanced up from his task, blinking in the dim light. “Yes, my son, I have noticed. That is part of why we are going back to India. I have no family here, and there you can be with your mother’s relatives again. There are cousins aplenty at your grandmother’s palace.”

  David opened his mouth to protest, to beg to stay in England. He wanted to remain close to Emily, despite the cold wretchedness of this country and many of its inhabitants. But then he noticed, not for the first time, how pale his father had become, how thin and shrunken. His golden hair was now silver. Once, he had been hearty and robust, turned brown by the Indian sun, full of jokes and laughter. Until his wife died, and they left their home in Calcutta to come here, to their “ancestral home.”

  England was killing David’s father. And David could not add to his troubles with whining and complaints. If his father needed India, needed the sun and the river to feel close to his wife again, then to India they would go.

  Even if David had to leave his best friend behind.

  “Of course, Father,” he said quietly. “It will be good to see my grandmother and cousins again. I will just go finish my packing.” As he turned back toward the door, he remembered that he had one confession to make. “Father, I—I did something today you may not approve of.”

  “And what might that be, David? You have never given me even an instant of trouble before.”

  “I gave Mother’s Navaratna ring to Lady Emily, for her protection.”

  David closed his eyes against the expected storm of protest. His father held anyt
hing that had belonged to Gayatri as sacred. Yet there was no storm, no sound at all. Only silence, and the soft thud of books lowered into the crate.

  He glanced back over his shoulder to find his father’s head bowed, his clasp tight on the wooden edges of the crate. “Indeed? Well. That is fitting, then.”

  “Fitting?” David asked, puzzled.

  “Yes. That we should both leave our treasures in the hands of the Kenton family. They will keep them safe.”

  Mindful of her torn and muddied hem—and doubly mindful of the scolding she would receive if anyone saw it before she had a chance to change—Emily took off her shoes and crept up the grand staircase of Fair Oak. Thankfully, there was no one to see her except a footman and a maid, who were more interested in flirting with each other than in their employer’s wayward daughter. Now, if she could just reach her chamber undetected, and find a fresh frock before Miss Lynn came looking for her...

  She tiptoed past the open door of her mother’s sitting room. It would be the very worst if her mother caught her, and gave her a lecture on how a proper duke’s daughter should behave! Emily heard her mother’s soft tones blended with her father’s deep voice, and she quickened her steps past the door. The only thing worse than a lecture from her mother would be one from both of her parents!

  “. . . very sad news about Darlinghurst,” Emily heard her mother say. She froze at the mention of David’s father, and backed up against the wall so she could hear the rest of the conversation. Miss Lynn said it was very wrong to eavesdrop, but really, how could a girl hope to learn anything if she did not eavesdrop? No one told a child anything. The only way Emily knew of her brother Damien’s wild ways in London, or her brother Alex’s new commission in the Army, was by overhearing.

  And now something was amiss with Lord Darlinghurst. Could this be the reason for the sadness she saw in dear David’s eyes this morning?

  “Yes, quite, my dear,” her father answered. “They have been excellent neighbors, and I will miss Darlinghurst greatly at the hunt.”

  “As will I,” his wife said, with a soft sigh. She was quite unusual for a lady in that she relished horses and the hunt—a reason Emily thought it quite unfair that her mother should scold her for lack of ladylike decorum, when her mother herself was out jumping fences! Emily could not dwell on that now, though. She had to find out what was happening with David’s family.

  “Even if Combe Lodge is leased out, I am sure the new tenants could not be half so agreeable,” the duchess continued. “His tales of India are always so entertaining! They could liven up the dullest card parties.”

  “I fear he was not so well received by others in the neighborhood as he was by us, though.”

  “Not well received? He is an earl! Surely he is invited everywhere.”

  “Invited, yes. But not entirely befriended. Not with a half-Indian heir, and an Indian wife he so obviously still mourns.”

  There was a long silence from the sitting room, penetrated only by the rustle of the duchess’s embroidery cloth, the shuffle of the duke’s feet as he paced across the carpet, which was so often his habit.

  Emily’s mother finally said, “You are right, of course, dearest. Perhaps he will be happier back in India—he does miss it so. Yet I do not understand at all why he would leave such a valuable jewel with you!”

  Emily heard a gentle clinking sound, and peeked through the cracked door to see the flash of sunlight on a huge blue sapphire in her father’s hand.

  She stifled a gasp. The Star of India! It was Lord Darlinghurst’s most prized possession. David said it had been a wedding gift from his mother to his father, and was the most valuable sapphire in all of Bengal. She had seen it only once before, locked in a case in the library of Combe Lodge. What was it doing here?

  Her father shrugged at her mother’s question, and carefully shut the jewel away in a velvet box. “Darlinghurst said there is some dispute with his late wife’s family over the true ownership of the sapphire. He does not want to take it back to Calcutta, where it could fall into their hands. He feels it will be safer here with us. And he says you must feel free to wear it, my dear Dorothy! It would look lovely in your hair.”

  Emily’s mother gave a little laugh. “As if I ever could wear it! It is too grand for me, and I would be afraid to lose it. But I am happy to keep it safe for him; he has been a good friend to us. Emily will be so sad to lose young David’s company, though! They have become such good friends, and I do think she is rather lonely here in the country. Perhaps school would be the answer for her....”

  Emily’s hands shook, and her stomach ached as if she would be sick. She did not stay to hear any more. She took off running back down the corridor in a blind panic, uncaring of who might see her.

  David was leaving! Going back to India. That was why he gave her the ring, why he seemed so sad and serious today. He was going halfway around the world, and she would never see him again.

  She was not thinking clearly at all. No rational images could pierce her mind. She only knew she had to see David, to make him stay here with her.

  Emily burst out of the front door past the startled footman and maid, and dashed down the marble steps onto the drive, never slowing. She ran as fast as she could toward the road to Combe Lodge, not noticing the pain in her side, the aches in her leg muscles. She ignored the calls of the farmers she passed.

  I must see David, she thought. I must!

  She swung around the open front gates of the Lodge—only to see a wagon, overloaded with trunks and crates, lumbering its way down the lane. Closely following, coming around to pass the wagon and lead the small procession, was a grand carriage, the Huntington crest painted on its glossy black door.

  So it was true. They were leaving. David was leaving without saying a proper good-bye.

  “David!” she screamed out, afraid he could not possibly hear her. “David, good-bye!”

  His dark head leaned out of the window, as the carriage drew farther and farther away from her. He raised his hand in a gesture of farewell, and shouted, “Remember what I told you about the ring, Boudicca!”

  Then he was gone. Emily stood there and watched until even the clouds of dust raised by the vehicles had subsided and the road was quiet. She stood there un-moving as a marble statue, as the sun sank lower in the sky and a cool breeze blew up around her.

  Her friend was gone. She twisted the ring around on her finger, telling herself that this was all she had left of him. She felt numb now, as if she stood in a snowstorm, but she knew that soon, very soon, the flood of pain would come.

  She heard a horse draw to a halt behind her, but she did not turn to see who it was until she felt a gentle touch on her arm. Her brother Alex knelt beside her, his gaze steady and concerned as he watched her. He did not even seem to notice the road dust that marred his new white uniform breeches.

  “Are you all right, Buttercup?” he asked softly. “Mother and Miss Lynn are looking for you. It is almost time for tea.”

  Emily blinked down at him. She felt like she was just beginning to come awake after a very long nightmare. “They have gone away, Alex,” she whispered.

  “The Huntingtons? Yes, I know. Mother said they were going back to India. I’m sorry, Buttercup—I know David was your friend.”

  “India is such a very long way away.”

  “Indeed it is. But I am sure you can write to him once he is settled there. It is not on the moon, you know.”

  Emily had not thought of that, and it gave her a tiny spot of comfort in her pain. “Do you think I could?”

  “Of course. But you must be well when you write to him. He would not want to hear you have caught a chill standing here in the wind. Will you come home with me now, Buttercup, and have some nice, warm tea?”

  She nodded slowly, still feeling strangely numb. She let Alex lift her up onto his horse and turn toward home.

  I will not forget, David, she thought. Never.

  Chapter One

  Calcu
tta, Fourteen Years Later

  “It is true, then, David shona. You are leaving us.” The soft, dulcet, yet unmistakably imperious voice of David’s grandmother Meena floated to him on the warm breeze from her open windows.

  David closed the door behind him and leaned back against it, his arms crossed over his chest. He could not help but grin, despite the seriousness of his errand in the zenana. His grandmother could have made a fortune treading the boards, if she had not married a wealthy rajah at the age of thirteen and lived all her life in splendid, if isolated, luxury. Her voice, full of doom, and her pose of weak prostration against silken bolsters were pure drama.

  “I am hardly abandoning you, Didu,” he answered. “You have all my cousins still, and a veritable army of servants at your beck and call at all times. I daresay you will not miss me at all.”

  “Not miss you! Ish.” Meena flung out one dark, slender, bejeweled arm, her ruby and emerald bangles clinking like the lightest of music. “You are my eldest grandson, my darling, departed Gayatri’s child. You are the father of my prettiest great-granddaughter. I rely on you so, David. And now you propose to leave me. To abandon your home!”

  Some of David’s amusement faded at this familiar litany. She knew very well why he had to go.

  He pushed away from the door and moved into the room. His grandmother’s personal sitting room was, as always, the very portrait of luxury and comfort. The tiled floor was covered with a carpet woven in rich, jewel-like tones of red, blue, and gold. Scattered about were low tables inlaid with intricate mosaics of flowers in mother-of-pearl, as well as silk cushions and bolsters in green, red, purple, and sun yellow. Heavy wooden shutters were drawn partially over the windows, letting in a cooling breeze but shutting out the worst of the warm afternoon sun. Servants hovered in the shadows, waiting on their mistress’s every whim. One of them worked the punkah that stirred overhead.

  David came to a halt next to the cushions where his grandmother reclined. The rich silk of her green and gold sari shimmered around her, and her silver-streaked black hair and unlined skin, the shine of her black, kohl-lined eyes, belied her age. She could easily have passed for David’s mother rather than his grandmother, and that included her vibrant good health and energy as well as her beauty. Yet she so enjoyed playing the helpless elderly female, dependent on her grandchildren for everything.