Veils of Silk

by Mary Jo Putney

  David's brandy glass halted in midair halfway to his mouth. Incredulous, he said, "Our sister Juliet? And Ross Carlisle?"

  After Ian had sketched in the details, David gave a soft whistle of amazement. "You were damned lucky."

  "Indeed." Ian selected a mango and began carving it into slivers with the razor-sharp Persian dagger his sister had given him. "I remind myself of that all the time."

  "So Juliet and Ross are together again," David said thoughtfully. "Why the devil did she run off in the first place? I never understood that. I know that Juliet has more than her share of Cameron impulsiveness, but leaving Ross after six months of marriage seemed like pure insanity."

  "She never told me why she left, but Ross is satisfied with her explanation. That's all that counts." Ian halted for a moment as he remembered the vivid closeness he had seen between his sister and her husband. He was happy for them, but the memory made his own situation seem all the bleaker.

  Disgusted with his self-pity, he continued, "They'll be arriving back in England soon. Not only has Juliet turned into an adoring and more-or-less dutiful wife, she is well on her way to providing Ross with an heir.''

  David grinned. "Trust Juliet not to waste any time."

  "Georgina didn't either."

  His brother's expression sobered. "Don't judge her too harshly, Ian. When the news came that you'd been executed—and it was a convincing report, not a vague rumor—Georgina was badly broken up. Because I was your brother, she spent hours talking about you whenever we met."

  "Then she turned around and married the next man in line."

  "She's the sort of female who needs a man."

  Ian swallowed his first mouthful of brandy. As he had expected, it hit with the impact of a blow. He welcomed the effect; with luck, it would soon render him unconscious. "Chivalrous of you to defend her, but I'm not interested in being fair-minded just now."

  David's brows drew together. He was fond of Georgina and didn't blame her for believing that her fiancée was dead. But she had married Phelps very quickly... and her haste had created the very devil of a situation for Ian. "If it's any comfort," he said at last, "you were widely and honestly mourned by everyone in Cambay, from Colonel Whitman to the lowliest sweeper."

  "No, I can't say that it's much comfort," Ian said dryly as he reduced the mango to a pile of juicy pulp and reddish rind.

  David studied his guest uneasily. He had grown up idolizing his older brother, utterly confident that Ian's endless strength and good nature were equal to anything. It was Ian who had taught David how to ride like a Bedouin, how to defend himself against larger boys, and how to sneak out of the house when they were supposed to be asleep.

  But the man who had returned from Bokhara was almost a stranger. His thin face all harsh planes and angles, Ian looked much older than his thirty-two years. He hadn't once laughed, and his rare smile was a meaningless twist of the lips. Uncertainly David said, "Will you exchange to another regiment? I imagine that seeing Georgina and Gerry together all the time would be... difficult."

  "An understatement." Ian stabbed a slice of mango with the tip of his knife and studied the juicy flesh as he considered the question. Abruptly he flipped the fruit to the plate uneaten. "I'm going to resign my commission. I have no idea what I'll do instead, but I've had enough of fighting Indians and playing the Great Game against the Russians. To hell with it all. Her Majesty's bloody empire will have to stand or fall without me."

  The bitterness of his words momentarily silenced David. Then he realized that there was a piece of family news that was relevant to Ian's future. "Fortunate that you want to leave the army, because you're needed back in Scotland."

  "Whatever for?" Ian asked, unimpressed. He pushed the plate of mango fragments away and drank more brandy.

  "You're now the laird of Falkirk."

  Ian's face went rigid. "How can that be?"

  David sighed. "About a year ago, there was an accident. Uncle Andrew and both his sons were drowned on the loch. They were fishing when one of those vicious squalls blew up."

  Ian shoved violently away from the table. "Bloody hell, all three of them killed at once? That's damnable."

  As he paced across the room, his first reaction was shock and grief. It took time to grasp what the news meant to him personally. Falkirk was the Cameron family seat, but Ian's late father had been Andrew's younger brother, and Ian had never imagined that he might inherit the estate and title. He had been raised to make his own way in the world. Yet now, through a senseless tragedy, he was Lord Falkirk.

  Realizing something else, he stopped pacing and looked narrowly at his brother. "With me reported dead, you were next in line to inherit."

  "Yes and no." David leaned back in his chair. "Of course the lawyers notified me, but in the same post there was a letter from Mother ordering me not to start thinking I was Lord Falkirk, because you were still alive."

  For a moment Ian's mood eased. "Did I mention that it was Mother who found Ross in Constantinople and bullied him into going to Bokhara?"

  "I'm not surprised to hear it. She was determined to make the lawyers wait the full seven years before declaring you dead," David grinned. "She's become much more forceful over the years. Widowhood suits her."

  Ian rubbed at his aching temple. "How much do you mind not inheriting Falkirk? In spite of Mother, you must have begun to think of it as yours."

  "I wouldn't have minded being Lord Falkirk, drafty castle and all," David admitted a little wistfully. "But I'd rather have you alive. Besides, I'm not ready to leave India yet. I'll earn my own piece of Scotland in my own time."

  At least his brother didn't hate him for having survived. Ian resumed his pacing, finally coming to a halt by a window. As he stared out at the dark velvet night, he tested the idea of returning to the land of his birth. As a diplomat, Ian's father had spent most of his life abroad, so Falkirk had been his children's British home. Ian had lived there as a small child, spent his school holidays exploring the wild hills and swimming in the beautiful, treacherous sea loch.

  Scotland, the land of his fathers, cool and green, as familiar as his own bones. In his present state of turbulence, the idea of Falkirk shimmered like a distant beacon on a stormy night. Losing Georgina had left a huge hole in the middle of his spirit, but Falkirk could fill some of that emptiness. It gave him a place to go, and a reason to make the effort.

  He turned and leaned against the window frame, arms folded across his chest. "I guess I'll be going back to Scotland."

  "I hope you'll stay a few days before you start back," David said. "Lord knows when I'll see you again. It will be years before I'll be able to visit home."

  Having decided to leave India, Ian would have liked nothing better than to do so immediately, but that was impossible. "Before I leave, I've an errand to perform in Baipur. When I'm done, I'll stop in Cambay on the way back to Bombay."

  "What kind of errand?"

  Ian thought of darkness and cold and despair, and the man who in worldly terms had been an enemy, but who had become as close as Ian's own shadow. "For a year I shared my cell with a Russian colonel, until he was executed. He kept a journal in a small Bible, and I promised that if possible, I'd send it to his closest relative, his niece. As of three or four years ago, the girl lived at Baipur. Since I'm this close, I'll take the journal in person rather than send it through official channels."

  David's brows rose. "What on earth is a Russian girl doing living at an Indian district station?''

  "The child's mother was the colonel's younger sister, Tatyana, and her father was a Russian cavalry officer." Ian explained. "After Tatyana's first husband died, she visited a Swiss spa to bury her grief and met a Company administrator called Kenneth Stephenson, who was on his way home to teach at the Company training college at Haileybury. They married and lived at Haileybury until Tatyana died five or six years ago."

  "The Company must have loved having a Russian at the heart of their training college," Davi
d said, amused.

  "According to Pyotr, his sister wasn't the least political, but she could charm any man in creation. After she died, Stephenson asked to be assigned to India again. He was made district collector in Baipur and his stepdaughter came out with him. Pyotr hadn't had any contact with his niece for some time, but there's a good chance she's still in Baipur."

  "The political agent in Cambay will know," David said. "What's the girl's name, and how old is she?"

  "Larissa Alexandrovna Karelian, but Pyotr always called her 'his little Lara,'" Ian replied, rolling the "r's." "He said she'd been an early baby and Larissa Alexandrovna seemed too long a name for such a tiny mite, so she became Lara. Pyotr had no children of his own, so his niece was special to him." Ian thought again. "I don't know how old the girl is, but from the way Pyotr talked, she must be thirteen or fourteen. Old enough to have the journal, and to know how her uncle died."

  To himself, Ian admitted that it would be simpler if the girl were no longer within reach. Then he could send the journal, with a brief explanation, to a Russian embassy. But he owed Pyotr too much to take the easy way out, so he must visit the child himself.

  Hesitantly David said, "Do you have a headache? You keep rubbing your forehead."

  Ian's hand dropped. "I've had headaches ever since I lost the eye, but they've been diminishing. Maybe they'll stop altogether some day." Suddenly David's unspoken sympathy was more than Ian could bear, and he felt a crashing need to be alone. "If you'll excuse me, I'm ready to call it a night."

  He walked to the table and finished the last of his brandy, then withdrew to his room with more speed than courtesy. There he stripped off his outer clothing and lay down on the bed clad only in a pair of lightweight drawers. But in spite of fatigue and brandy, sleep eluded him.

  He had always assumed he would spend his life in the army, had never considered leaving until he heard himself say that he was going to resign his commission. Yet as soon as the words came out of his mouth, he had known he had no choice. Once the military life had suited him as water suited a fish, but no more.

  Above his head, the huge fan called a punkah turned lazily, sending cooler air over his heated body. Outside on the veranda, a servant called a punkah wallah pulled the rope that caused the fan to rotate. Eventually the servant decided it was time for bed, and the long, fabric-covered blades of the punkah creaked to a halt, leaving the inside of the bungalow silent.

  As the air went still, the yellow flame of the oil lamp lengthened. Ian found himself watching as if mesmerized. He had deliberately left the lamp lighted, for in Bokhara he had developed a distaste for darkness.

  His lips tightened to a bloodless line. It was time, past time, to be honest. What he felt about darkness was nothing as mild as distaste; it was surging, irrational terror.

  Nor was darkness the only fear he had acquired in prison. As his bare chest rose and fell in agitation, he forced himself to face the ugly facts he had been trying to deny since his rescue.

  He was afraid of being alone, yet he found it difficult to endure the company of other people.

  He was terrified of being confined against his will.

  He was afraid to sleep because he feared his dreams.

  He was a coward, a man sworn to honor's code who had betrayed himself more profoundly than anyone else could ever have betrayed him.

  He was not the man who went to Bokhara, but a dry, broken husk who would never be the same again.

  He feared death. Infinitely worse, he feared life.

  One by one, he mentally ticked off his weaknesses, studying each one until it settled in his mind and made itself at home. But bitter as those truths were, they were not as painful as the final, brutal fact that he had desperately refused to accept. Even in the privacy of his own mind, it was almost impossible to say the words to himself, but finally he did.

  He was impotent.

  As Ian's nails dug crescent-shaped grooves in his palms, he rolled the syllables around in his mind. Impotent. A eunuch. Half a man. Never again would he know the basic human satisfactions of passion and physical closeness, never would he have a wife or child.

  The knowledge seared like white-hot iron. There might be men of naturally monkish disposition who would scarcely notice the loss of their sexuality, but he was not one of them.

  He knew exactly when the damage had been done; during the worst of the beatings administered by the prison guards, he had been kicked savagely in the genitals. After that day he had never felt desire again.

  At the time he had barely noticed, for hunger and despair had already extinguished passion. The question of whether he had been rendered a eunuch seemed academic, for women were no more than a distant memory and he had expected to die in Bokhara.

  But he had survived, and the question of his virility became relevant again. When freedom and decent food didn't restore him, he had refused to believe that he might have suffered permanent damage. Instead, he convinced himself that being reunited with his fiancée would make him whole. Georgina would arouse him, for her ripe curves had enticed him from the first time they met.

  When she had accepted his proposal, he had been impatient to teach her the pleasures of the flesh, for during their stolen moments of privacy she had proved to be an apt pupil. But because she was only nineteen, her parents had insisted on a long engagement. That was one reason he had been willing to go to Bokhara, for he had found it difficult to wait.

  Throughout the years in Central Asia, his fiancée had occupied his thoughts, even after desire was no more than a memory. She became a symbol of everything he had loved and lost.

  After his rescue, he had made his way back to Georgina in search of healing. Yet when he saw her, he felt not a single flicker of desire, even before he had discovered that she was married. Though she was as attractive as ever, sexually he might as well have been dead.

  For a desperate moment he considered visiting the beautiful Indian girl who had been his mistress until he had fallen in love with Georgina. Leela was no inhibited English maid but a skilled courtesan, and their relationship had been passionate and mutually satisfying. Yet when he thought of her now, his body did not respond in the slightest. Not a twitch, not a tremor, even when he recalled precisely what they had done together.

  He had a brief, horrifying vision of visiting Leela and failing utterly to perform. She was kind and would not laugh at what he had become. She would pity him, which would be far worse.

  Nor would he deceive himself with the hope that he was suffering from a temporary condition that would eventually heal, for he had had enough of self-delusion. It had been over three months since his escape from prison. But though his overall physical condition was much better, there had been no change in his sexual nature, not the slightest hint of improvement. The time had come to accept that the worst had happened, and that a vital part of his life was gone forever.

  After working his way through to the final bleak conclusion, Ian released his breath in a ragged sigh. He'd had quite enough merciless honesty for one night. What he craved now was cowardly surcease. He rolled to his feet, lifted the lamp, and returned to the darkened drawing room, where he found the brandy decanter in a cabinet. Recklessly he filled a glass almost to the brim and dropped into the nearest wicker armchair.

  He was taking a deep swallow when the door to David's bedroom opened and his brother wandered in, half-dressed and blinking sleepily. In the last three years, David had developed an impressive set of muscles. Just as well that he hadn't retaliated when Ian struck him.

  It occurred to Ian that since he would leave no heirs, it was likely that David or a son of his would eventually inherit Falkirk. Finding some comfort in that thought, Ian tilted the glass toward his brother in an informal salute. "Sorry to have woken you, but I decided that I need to get seriously drunk."

  David raised one hand to cover a yawn. "No matter. I'm a light sleeper."

  Not as light as Ian, who could not remember when he had last had a no
rmal night's sleep. More to himself than to his brother, he said, "I've been very lucky. Miraculously saved from durance vile, inheriting a title and a fortune." His voice broke. "That being the case, why the hell am I so miserable?"

  David regarded him with grave blue eyes. "Having just lost the woman you love, I think you're entitled to be miserable."

  Ian let his head fall back against the chair as he pondered his brother's words. Did he love Georgina? Two years earlier he had certainly believed himself in love. He and Georgina had been perfectly matched, she had made him laugh, and he had wanted to bed her. He had also enjoyed winning her away from all her other suitors. She hadn't been a deep thinker, but then, neither had he. Perhaps that had been love. Now he really didn't know what he felt about her, beyond a lacerating sense of loss.

  He gulped another mouthful of brandy. "Georgina was wise to accept Gerry," he said dispassionately, "for the Ian Cameron she wanted to marry died in Bokhara."

  If she had still been single, she might have felt honor-bound to wed Ian, for a colonel's daughter knew her duty. But of course he could not have married her once he recognized his incapacity. Finishing the first glass of brandy, Ian leaned over and poured another, spilling some because it was hard to judge distances with only one eye.

  David crossed to the cabinet and lifted the decanter. "Mind if I join you in getting drunk?"

  Ian's fingers tightened around his glass. "As a matter of fact, I do mind. I'd really rather be alone."

  David's face became expressionless. "Very well." He started to leave, then swung back. "I know you're hurting, Ian, the pain radiates from you like heat from an oven. But in the nature of things, eventually you'll feel better—there are other women in the world, and I think you'll enjoy being the laird of Falkirk. Meanwhile...," he groped for an oblique way to express his fear, "don't do anything foolish, will you?"

  Jarred to find that David had sensed what he had not acknowledged even to himself, Ian said, "Don't worry. I'm a coward, but not that much of one." His lips curved into the mockery of a smile. "I haven't the right to throw away what Juliet and Ross risked their own lives to preserve."