The Bride Wore Pearls (17 page)

Perhaps she had been searching for a balm to her wounded female pride. Or perhaps she had fleetingly toyed with the notion of an
affaire
. She was not sure now. But she was sure, if he asked, what her answer would be. Her heart had flown—traitorous organ that it was—and trying to imagine herself with anyone save Rance was just an exercise in futility.

She should have been thrilled at Napier’s interest. Indeed, she was a fool for not pursuing him. He was a captivating man. And she—well, she had been alone for a very long time, and lonely for longer than that.

She believed Napier misguided and Rance stubborn. But it was also remotely possible that Napier had utterly deceived her; deceived her about all of this—his desire, his honesty, and his true intent in helping her—and done it so cleverly that she had failed to sense it. She thought not. But only a fool would fail to question such a man’s motivations.

He broke the silence with a long sigh, his chin down, his hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets, almost as if he had forgotten her presence. The afternoon sun shone upon him through the tall window that overlooked the yard, casting a gloss over his neat, dark hair, and setting his gold watch chain ablaze. His nose did indeed have a decided hook, and his eyes were more piercing than warm. And yet he was not unhandsome.

Anisha cleared her throat, bestirring him from his apparent reverie.

He lifted those hard eyes to hers again, but this time they had softened a little. “I had heard, after our last meeting, that you were to be married,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

“Did you?” she said sharply. “To whom?”

But she knew the answer to that.

“To Lord Bessett,” he said. “And frankly, of all the gentlemen in the St. James Society—however suspicious I am of the whole lot—in Bessett there is much to be admired. It would have been . . . easier, somehow.”

“Easier?” She moved slowly toward him. “Easier in what way?”

She had the satisfaction of seeing his face color faintly. “Will you make me answer that question, Lady Anisha?” he asked softly. “I think you know I hold you in the highest regard—and you also think, no doubt, that I have looked too high in my admirations.”

“Why do the English always say ‘no doubt’ so frequently and so authoritatively?” Anisha murmured. “Especially when there is every doubt? You cannot know what I think.”

“Perhaps not,” he conceded. “But I daresay you
do
know what I think—and fairly precisely, I fear.”

Anisha could only stare at him for a moment, for his supposition was not in the least rhetorical. “Is that what all this honesty is about?” she murmured. “Do you imagine I . . . well, that I am like Lord Ruthveyn? That I
know
things even when they remain unsaid?”

“I find your brother unnerving,” Napier confessed. “He makes my hair stand on end, to be honest.”

“Much of the time, my brother is a mystery to me,” she said truthfully. “But I am perfectly ordinary, I assure you.”

“Oh, hardly that!” he interjected.

“And if I know what you are thinking,” she continued, “it is with a woman’s intuition, and no more. You say I must think you look too high. I say you pay me a great compliment by looking at all. You say you esteem me. But I would say you scarcely know me.”

His smile was muted. “True, but it seems not to matter,” he replied. “And you, I daresay, are using that fact to get what you want. Or Lazonby is. But oddly enough, I almost do not mind. It shames me a little to say that I could be so weak.”

Anisha could only respond honestly. “Perhaps I am using you,” she admitted. “But as arrogant as I find you, I do find your company oddly refreshing. Should you choose to renege on your offer, Mr. Napier, we will part as friends.”

“Will we?” he interjected, his smile doubtful.

“We will,” she said more firmly. “And no, as you’ve likely concluded, I am not to be married. But Lord Bessett is. My brother may have longed to see us make a match of it, but that was mere wishful thinking on his part.”

“And so we are back to Lord Lazonby,” he said quietly.

“I suppose we are,” she finally answered.

“Have you . . . any sort of understanding with him?”

“That is really none of your business,” said Anisha, “but no, I have not.”

“But you still wish to see his case files?”

“I wish to see the files in the murder of Lord Percy Peveril,” she corrected, “as we discussed some days past. Now, may I?”

His eyes warmed a little dangerously. “Yes,” he said. “For a price.”

“What sort of price?”

“An evening of your company,” he said.

Anisha narrowed her gaze. “Are you doing this to make Lazonby jealous? It won’t work, you know. Most days I wonder he knows I’m alive.”

Napier shrugged. “Then both of you are fools,” he said. “But no, I am doing it because you intrigue me. I am doing it because I would like to spend an evening in your company.”

“An evening?” she asked guardedly. “Or a night? For the latter, I assure you, will not happen.”

The warmth in his eyes deepened to near merriment. “A
night—
?” he murmured. “Well.
That
would be looking high indeed, my lady.”

Anisha felt her cheeks flush. “Very well, you ask only for an evening,” she acknowledged. “May it be a night of my choosing? With no constraints or preconditions?”

This time, he hesitated. “Yes,” he slowly answered.

“Then will you agree to dine with me?” she asked. “In my home, tomorrow night?”

He blinked once before answering. “Very well, yes. There, are you pleased, Lady Anisha? It appears I am at your command.”

“Lovely,” she said. “Come at six. I think you know the address. Now, may I have two hours with that fat file upon your desk?”

“Pray make yourself at home.” Napier waved toward the desk with a flourish. “Sir George is expecting me at the Home Office for a meeting. In the meantime, I shall instruct my clerks to leave you undisturbed.”

“Thank you.” With that, Anisha went to the desk and began to unwind the cashmere wrap.

Napier, however, followed her. “And Lady Anisha?” His hand shot out to seize her wrist—gently, but very firmly. “You are welcome to copy anything you like from that file. But if you dare take anything—
anything
—I will know it. And I reserve the right to search your person before you leave.”

Anisha could only look at him and nod.

L
azonby leaned back against the rough-hewn tavern bench and quaffed the first inch of a stout porter, sucking down the foam along with it, his gaze focused sharply through the front window. The rumble of noonday conversation around him had been pushed to the far reaches of his mind, for a stone cottage some thirty yards down the lane held the whole of his attention.

The house was large for a cottage, with six windows up and two bow windows down, a front door painted glossy blue, and a wide garden gate arched over with a tangle of climbing rose. Situated directly in the sun as it was, and the season approaching late May, the bramble was already dotted with tight, green buds so small one’s eye had to search, very near, in order to see them.

It would be a white rose, he thought, when the blooms burst.

White like the trim round the cottage’s windows and the little vine-covered pergola round back. He had seen that, too, several days past when he’d trailed Coldwater up to the village, then crouched by the rose bush until dusk so that he might climb over the high garden wall. There the white paint had been so fresh that even now he could smell the sharp stench of it in his nostrils.

That’s how it was with white. It was a deceptive color. The color of priests and purity and that new peculiarity, wedding gowns. And yet it was also the color of burial shrouds, of cumulous clouds heavy with rain, and of quaking, cowardly surrender.

Himself, he’d never waved the white flag. Not in battle. Not in life. And the shroud? That, too, he’d somehow avoided. But he’d sure as hell been rained on, literally and metaphorically.

He’d been rained on, in fact, today—around four in the morning, when he had returned home not from a night of carousing but from cracking the lock on Coldwater’s third-floor office. It had been a bit of a trick, that. And yielded him nothing. Coldwater’s desk at the
Chronicle
was that of a wraith; absent anything that told of the man’s character.

“Bangers and mash!”

This pronouncement was punctuated by the
thunk!
of heavy crockery striking the oak tabletop.

He looked up to see the serving girl staring at him, her plain face fixed in an equally bland expression, a thick cloth held limply in one hand.

“Thank you,” he said, flashing a wide grin. “Smells delicious.”

Finally a soft smile curled her mouth. “Oh, ’tis good, sir,” she confirmed, tilting her head at his nearly full glass. “Fetch you another?”

“Ah, that might make my head swim,” he said, giving her a little wink. “Worse, I mean, than your pretty blue eyes.”

“Oh, go on with you!” She smacked his shoulder with her folded cloth. “Anything else, then?”

“Not at present,” he said. “But perhaps I’ll think of something, if it means you’ll come back?”

She laughed. And they both knew he wasn’t going to think of something. Not that sort of something.

Still, it was a small enough thing to do, to cheer up a plain girl a bit with a little light flirtation. Besides, she had a lovely, if slightly too plump, figure, and eyes that radiated honesty. Indeed, he sensed not a whit of malice in her. And plain, perhaps, was not the word. The truth was, most women of good heart were pretty in one way or another if a man just took the time to look. So he looked. And he flirted. For no reason. For any reason.

And thinking of all that, for reasons he could not explain, made him long for the one woman he
didn’t
flirt with.

How perverse. How
pathetic
.

But the girl’s smile had become a grin. “Ta, then,” she said, her mood and her step lightening as she turned to swish away. “Have a lovely afternoon.”

But at the last instant, he thought of something and caught her wrist, more roughly than he’d intended. She must have made a sound of surprise, for a silence fell across the room, mistrust surging, every eye turning.

“Sorry.” Lazonby released her. The girl flashed a carefree glance all around. After a moment’s hitch, the tavern regulars fell back into conversation.

That was a small thing, too; a village thing, to watch out for one another. He was just an interloper, unknown to them all, for though Hackney lay on the fringe of greater London, it was a small place still.

The girl was looking at him enquiringly.

“Are you permitted to sit a moment?” he asked.

“Suppose so,” she said, already sliding onto the opposite bench. “Yours was the last from the kitchen.”

Lazonby fished in his pocket, then snapped a shiny new florin onto the table.

“Coo!” said the girl, picking it up. “What’s that?”

“Two shillings,” he said. “Newly minted.”

The girl turned the reverse to the light. “Ooh,” she said. “Pretty enough to be a necklace, that is.”

“Would you like that?” he asked. “To make a necklace of it? I can get it drilled with a hole, and a silk cord to wear it on.”

Her smile fell. “What would I have to do for it?”

“Nothing like that,” he said gently, sensing her unease. “It’s just that I’m not from here, and I require a house.”

“A house?” Her eyes widened. “Can’t think ’ow I’d help with that.”

“I just wanted to know about the village,” he said. “It looks pretty. And friendly. And it’s close enough to London to go by train or omnibus, isn’t it?”

“Nearly so,” she said, pointing over her shoulder. “ ’Bus comes up Bethnal Green Road. And there’s to be two stations open next year. Kingsland and . . . bless me, but I forget.”

“Hackney,” said the lone occupant of a table some five feet away. “ ’Ow could you forget that one, Min?”

The girl laughed. “Right you are, Mr. Fawcett! Hackney Station.”

Fawcett leaned nearer. “What sort of house are you looking for, sir?” he asked more conversationally. “Something to let? Or freehold?”

Lazonby shrugged. “Either, if it’s the right sort of house,” he said, trying to take the man’s measure. “It’s for my maiden aunt. She fancies village life, but she’s of an age where I need to get her out of Shropshire and closer to London—not
too
close, though, if you take my meaning.”

“Oh, aye,” said the man, waggling his brows. “Got a mother-in-law in Croydon—and that’s close enough for me.”

Min giggled again. And the man, Fawcett, smiled. He wanted to suggest something, something to his own benefit, Lazonby’s instinct told him. So he pressed on, pointing through the window. “I’ll tell you what I like,” he said. “I like that house. Has it ever been for sale?”