The Bride Wore Pearls (20 page)

Coldwater really was half mad, just as Rance had always maintained. And there was no point in further inciting Rance’s anger. No point in writing to Raju. No point, really, in telling anyone at all.

Anisha turned to the officer and smiled. “Why, I believe you have run that fellow off!” she said. “I thank you, sir, and bid you good day.”

Back across the main thoroughfare, Anisha waited until Brogden had let down the steps of the carriage. Then, as he straightened, she set a finger to her lips, warning in her eyes.

Brogden’s amiable countenance darkened. Then it relented, and he gave her a conspiratorial nod.

“Aye, then, ma’am,” he said. “As ye wish.”

Anisha climbed inside. “St. James’s Place,” she ordered, “but not for long.”

Across from the St. James Society, just as she’d hoped, Mr. Ringgold was manning the door at the Quartermaine Club, though it was now just midafternoon. Anisha descended, ordering Brogden to turn the coach at the end of the lane.

“Mr. Ringgold,” she said, marching across the street, “be so good as to go downstairs and ask Mr. Quartermaine if he might see me. But across the street, if he would be so kind.”

“
Hmph,
” Pinkie grunted, casting a disparaging glance at the St. James Society. But he went, Anisha watching through the glass as he descended the stairs. Hastening across the narrow lane, she requested that tea be sent up to the club’s private library.

She was still standing by the window, pondering her words, when it arrived. Quartermaine came in on the footman’s heels, his hat still in hand. His eyes were distrustful, but his smile was wry.

“Well, Lady Anisha,” he said. “To what do I owe the extraordinary pleasure of being summoned across the street in the middle of my workday?”

She felt her cheeks warm. “I beg your pardon for that,” she said. “It was badly done of me. But I thought you mightn’t wish an unattended lady calling on you.”

His gaze swept down her length. “Actually, I can think of nothing more pleasant,” he murmured, “than a lady unattended—especially if she’s pretty.”

Anisha felt her spine stiffen. “Mr. Quartermaine, it is not necessary to flirt with me.”

He shrugged almost lazily. “Most ladies of the
ton
seem to expect it of me,” he said, the wry smile shifting to something darker. “And one does hate to disappoint. But this, I collect, is pure business?”

“It is a sort of business, yes,” she said with asperity. “I wish your opinion of something. Will you sit down and have a cup of tea?”

“With all respect, ma’am, I have plenty of my own business across the street.” Quartermaine propped one shoulder on the doorframe, having hardly entered the room. “More than I can manage, most days.”

“Yes,” she said briskly. “Yes, I do forget you’ve young men to fleece.”

“Just so,” he said blandly, all flirtation gone from his eyes. “But you may ask me whatever you please, so long as it’s quickly done. I’ll help you if I can.”

Resigned, Anisha withdrew the notes she’d stolen from Napier’s file. “I wish you to look at these,” she said, thrusting them at him.

He did so, his eyes methodically scanning each, then gave a low whistle. “I don’t think I want to know where you got them.”

“You do not,” she agreed. “Just tell what you think of them. Are they real? Would someone do murder over such a sum?”

“I’ve seen men knifed over two shillings,” he said, passing them back to her. “And yes, they look real enough to me. Why don’t you ask Lazonby?”

She snared her lip between her teeth. “I shall probably have to,” she confessed.

“Ah,” said Quartermaine. “Then he did not give them to you?”

Anisha realized he was probing. “Obviously not,” she replied, pointing at the circled word. “And what about this notation? ‘
B.H. Syndicate?
’ Have you any idea what it means?”

Quartermaine’s eyes flicked over the paper again, this time obviously catching on the word.

“Well?” she said.

“It looks insignificant to me,” he finally replied, picking up his hat.

It was clearly the end of their conversation. “Thank you,” she answered, tucking the notes into her reticule. “I’m very sorry to have troubled you, but I didn’t know who else to ask.”

Quartermaine bestirred himself lazily from the door. “Well, I might venture to suggest,” he said, “that perhaps you ought not ask anyone at all.”

She paced toward him. “Whatever do you mean?”

He tipped his hat toward the reticule she’d tossed onto one of the leather sofas. “If you wish my honest opinion, ma’am, those notes make me fear you’re meddling in things—perhaps dangerous things—that are none of your affair,” he said. “Lazonby, however wretched he may think himself, is, at the very least, free—and still breathing. Perhaps there comes a time to let well enough alone.”

Anisha felt herself quiver with indignation. “Is that some sort of threat, sir?”

His eyes softened; genuinely, she thought. “Certainly not, ma’am,” he said, slapping his hat back on his head as he left. “But it is what we here in the gaming business would call
very
sound advice.
”

Chapter 7

Of paled pearls and rubies red as blood.

William Shakespeare, “A Lover’s Complaint”

“O
oh, my lady, you do look a sight!”

With that, Janet stepped back to admire the reflected glory of the long string of pearls she’d just wrapped round Anisha’s neck—wrapped it twice, as a matter of fact, and then a third time.

“Oh, Janet, I don’t know.” Anisha stared into the dressing mirror, her hand coming up to touch the ruby clasp. “They just seem so . . .
ostentatious
.”

Janet set her head to one side. “Well, they are a show, ma’am, I do admit.”

Anisha stood, went to the cheval glass, and turned a little sideways. “How many are there, one wonders?” she murmured.

“Two hundred and ninety-three.” Janet spoke with confidence. “I counted ’em once.”

The lowest strand hung below Anisha’s breasts, which were nearly bared by her low-cut dinner gown. Against the emerald green silk and her honey-colored skin, the pearls seemed pale as milk. Almost stark, really.

The priceless strands had belonged to her Scottish grandmother, a tall, imperious woman who, even bent with age, had reached almost to Raju’s shoulder. Not especially happy with her son’s choice of bride, the good lady had made but one yearlong sojourn to India to see her grandchildren. Nonetheless, at her death, the elegant pearls had come to Anisha, her only granddaughter.

And Anisha loved them. She’d even been passing fond of her grandmother, for she now understood how hard it was to meld two cultures into one. Doing so had been the single hardest challenge of her life, and it had brought with it more pain than even her marriage, which had been more of a slow drift into disappointment.

But all the struggle aside, Anisha truly valued her Scottish half just as much as her Indian half. The pearls, however, having been strung for a far larger woman, seemed overwhelming on Anisha’s small frame.

And they simply weren’t her.

However hard she might try, Anisha suddenly realized, she would never appear—or feel—especially British. And tonight, inexplicably, she felt tired of trying. On impulse, she snapped the ruby clasp open and sent the pearls clattering into the porcelain dish on her night table.

“There,” she said, lifting her gaze. “That’s better.”

Janet tilted her head in the other direction. “I don’t know, ma’am,” the maid finally said. “Now you look . . . well,
starkers
.”

Returning to her dressing stool, Anisha agreed. Absent the pearls, the emerald gown seemed to bare her flesh from shoulder to shoulder, and nearly down to her nipples. The dress was newly made up by one of London’s most fashionable modistes, and very much
le dernier cri
—more so than anything Anisha owned.

But no. It would not do.

A mad, impulsive notion seized her. And then, the more she thought on it, the notion began to feel more brilliant than foolish. “Mother’s kundan choker,” she finally said. “That’s what’s needed—and fetch me her green and blue sari. The paisley one.”

Janet made a wincing expression. “Oh, ma’am, I don’t think English ladies wear them sort o’ things,” she said. “Not to a dinner party.”

But Anisha looked again at her bare shoulders and decided. “This one does,” she said. “At least after a fashion. Oh, and the brooch and earrings! I’ll need them, too. Besides, Janet, it is my party. I believe I shall do as I please.”

Janet set her fists on her hips and grinned. “Well, bully for you, ma’am,” she said. “I’ll find that thing in three shakes.”

The maid trotted good-naturedly off to the dressing room. Anisha unlocked the jewel case and lifted out the pieces she wanted. The long, dangling earrings were easily put on. Then, with Janet’s help, she fastened the choker. It lay cool and heavy round her neck like a wide golden collar, the finely hammered metal glowing behind the alternating rows of rose-cut diamonds and multihued gemstones. The last row, the short dangles made of alternating emeralds and sapphires, served to draw the eye up from her bodice.

The distraction was further enhanced when Anisha pleated the sari and fastened it near her right hip with the brooch. Then, wrapping it round behind her back, she brought it over her left shoulder and fanned out the pleats a bit, leaving it to hang almost to her knee, rather like a long, elegant shawl.

“Now,” said Janet a little triumphantly, “the peacock feathers!”

“Why not?” said Anisha.

In a trice, the feathers were found and pinned into her hair. Not so much a hat as a sort of headpiece, the long and elegant plumes gave Anisha the illusion of height—well, relatively speaking.

Leaving the dressing table, she returned to the cheval glass and let her gaze sweep critically down. The ensemble looked good, if a bit exotic. The sari was not made to be worn in quite that fashion, admittedly. Yet Anisha found it comfortable. Such was her life, now more than ever—a hash of different worlds.

Janet was plucking at one of the pleats to straighten it. “I like this,” she said. “It’s a bit like what her ladyship called an arisaid, but silk.”

Her ladyship,
Anisha knew, was a term the servants had used for her grandmother, but rarely, if ever, for Anisha’s mother.

“An arisaid?” she echoed. “What is that?”

“A long shawl of a thing,” said Janet. “But you’d not remember it, I’m sure. Lud, I barely do. But if the weather was the least snappish, she’d throw it over her shoulder and pin it on with a big, silver brooch. Sometimes she belted it. Odd, it was.”

Anisha searched her mind and came up with just the vaguest memory. But it skittered away again when she heard a carriage slow, then come rattling through the gateposts.

“Heavens, Janet.” Anisha’s hand fluttered to the choker, as if touching it might give her strength. “Has someone come early?”

Together they hastened through to her sitting room. At the window, Anisha drew back the underdrapes with one finger and peered down. The carriage, an elegant black landau, was drawing to a halt in the semicircular drive. It was easily recognized, for it bore the arms of the Earl of Lazonby and was the same carriage that had brought Anisha from the docks that long-ago day. Rarely, however, had she seen it since, for Rance—independent to the bone—preferred to drive himself, or simply to walk.

The first and second footmen were going down the stairs, but Rance, as usual, was ahead of them, and looking altogether too handsome for Anisha’s taste.

Having already thrown open the carriage door, he leapt down unaided, his brass-knobbed stick and top hat caught together in one hand, his black evening cloak billowing out behind to reveal a shimmering, pewter-colored lining. Beneath it he wore a black tailcoat and trousers with an elegant white cravat, and save for his unruly, wind-tossed curls, he looked every inch a man of fashion.

Up close, however, Anisha knew it would be different. No amount of tailoring would ever cloak Rance Welham in civility, for a rough-edged mercenary always shone through any veneer fine fashion might provide.

Janet made a low sound of feminine appreciation. “Lord love us, ma’am, if it isn’t Lazonby all togged out to the nines,” she murmured, “and a fine specimen of manhood he is, too.”

“Yes, and he knows it,” muttered Anisha, remembering their last parting. “He is also a full forty minutes early.”

“Want me to have Higgenthorpe put him in the parlor to cool his heels?”

“No.” Anisha let the curtain fall. “No, Janet, I shall go down. How do I look?”

The maid’s critical eye ran down her. “Well, not very English,” she said.

L
azonby went up the steps feeling oddly out of place for reasons he couldn’t explain. Hadn’t he entered this house at least a hundred times before? Two hundred, more like. And yet tonight something hung over him, portentous and unspoken—something besides this rare foray into polite society.

Or perhaps it was the overly elaborate cravat Horsham had practically lynched him with. Perhaps it was choking off the air—oxygen, Dr. von Althausen called it—from his brain.

In Ruthveyn’s grand entrance hall, all was as usual; the fine paintings marching up and down the walls, the smell of beeswax in the air, and the thick green Turkish carpet rolled out across the marble floor like a strip of lush bottomland.

Higgenthorpe greeted him warmly, carefully draping Lazonby’s evening cloak across his arm and taking the hat and stick as they waltzed through their usual routine of enquiring after one another’s health and remarking upon the weather.

This time, however, Anisha interrupted from the landing. “Hello, Rance,” she said coolly. “You’re rather early.”

Lazonby turned, his breath catching at the sight. Something deep in his chest seemed to twist as she flowed gracefully down the staircase, drawing his eyes like a compass to north.

But he regained himself and grinned. “I was all out of whisky,” he teased. “And I knew you would feel sorry for me.”

She flicked him an odd look as he approached. “That once-dependable old saw is losing teeth, my dear, at a prodigious rate,” she said.

He dared not ask what she meant but caught both her hands in his and kissed her cheek anyway. “Anisha,” he murmured, drawing back to look her up and down. “You look . . . my God—
breathtaking
.”

She drew her hands from his with a chiding glance. “Oh, don’t flirt with me, Rance,” she said, breezing efficiently past him and toward the parlor. “Seriously, do you want a sherry? Or something stronger?”

“Something stronger,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”

Following on her heels, he watched the trailing paisley thing shimmer like a silken waterfall behind her as she moved. Anisha’s hair was twisted up tonight to reveal the swanlike turn of her neck, the arrangement adorned with peacock feathers that matched the dangling strands of emeralds and sapphires she wore in her ears. He caught up with her just inside the room, and although his instincts were admittedly muted when it came to Anisha, he could still sense her discontent.

This, then, was the thing hanging over him. It had to be. Anisha was still angry over his having left her in St. James. But the truth was,
she
had left
him
. No matter how desperately he’d wished to go after Coldwater, he would never have left a lady standing in the street.

An empty glass already in hand, she cut him an odd, sidelong glance, a smile playing at one corner of her mouth. “At least you came tonight,” she said, drawing the stopper from Ruthveyn’s whisky decanter. “I feared you mightn’t, you know.”

“Is that your way of saying you weren’t sure you could count on me?” he asked, his voice deceptively light. “Because if memory serves, I have never failed you, Anisha. I have never made you a promise I did not keep. And I never will.”

At that, she hesitated, the decanter tipped over the glass. “Do you know, I believe you are right,” she quietly acknowledged. “So, did you run your quarry to ground last week?”

“Coldwater?” he said, watching her dainty, capable hands upon the crystal. “Oh, aye. Followed him all the way to Hackney. He’s got a cottage there—and a sister, just as Pinkie claimed.”

She poured herself a sherry, then led him toward the sofa opposite the hearth. Tonight the parlor had been opened onto the more formal withdrawing room by two sets of double doors in anticipation of the crowd.

He wished, suddenly, that it was the small, intimate room he was accustomed to. But he sat, and sipped for a moment at his whisky—even as he fought to keep his eyes from her. And yet he could feel her warm brown gaze upon him, strong and steady. It was a gaze a man could drown in were he not careful.

It struck him, and not for the first time, that he should simply stay away from Anisha. It would be easier, perhaps. Indeed, he should have insisted to Ruthveyn all those weeks ago to order Geoff to keep watch over his family. But Geoff had been slated to go to Belgium; for how long, no one had known. And Ruthveyn—well, Lazonby owed him. Owed him his very life, really. It was the least he could do, to keep young Luc from utter ruin and to bear Anisha company in her brother’s absence.

The fact that it was beginning to feel like a knife twisting in his heart every time he saw her . . . well, that was a pain he would simply have to endure. And he could endure it. The long years in prison had steeled him to survive even when hope was lost.

“So,” Anisha pressed, drawing him from his reverie, “what sort of cottage do they have?”

“Oh, a fine, large one,” he said casually. “With a deep rear garden. I got a look at the sister, too.”

“Did you? How?”

He flashed a grin. “As any common Peeping Tom might,” he replied. “I waited till dark, climbed over the garden gate, and watched her through a window.”

“Rance!” she chided. “Well, what was she like?”

He shrugged. “Good-looking, with a great pile of chestnut hair,” he said. “Something shy of thirty, I’d guess.”

“And God knows you’re accounted an expert in such matters,” said Anisha with only a hint of sarcasm. “Did you see Coldwater?”