The Bride Wore Pearls (35 page)

“Raju
wanted
to,” she interjected. “It was his duty.”

“Still, to then see Geoff hurt—well, I just snapped. I went for Jack across the sofa, I guess, and that bloody porcelain thing—Aristotle, or whoever the chap was—I knocked him over and he shattered into a hundred pieces, and all I could think was that now Ruthveyn was going to kill me. That I’d broken his blasted sculpture and he would be furious and it was all Jack’s fault—which gave me two reasons to throttle him—and then I got hold of him and . . . and . . . and . . .”

Anisha laid a hand on his arm. “
Breathe,
” she said. “Deeply.”

“Breathing, Nish, is not the solution to every damned thing!” he snapped. “I’m just trying to tell you how it was. I got him forced up against the wall, and got my hands round his throat, and then you and Ruthveyn burst in. And that’s
all it was.
”

Anisha cut him an odd glance. “Raju thought you were forcing him into something rather more intimate,” she said calmly. “As did I, frankly. That’s . . . that’s what it looked like. Like a man taking the spoils of war. Jack was terrified. He ran past me in a blind panic.”

“A wise choice,” gritted Rance.

She hesitated a heartbeat. “But Rance, Coldwater had never been afraid of you before,” she quietly pointed out. “He never ran away before—not even when he should have done.”

Rance just shook his head and pressed his lips into a thin line. Her words left him vaguely ill, for there was some truth in what she said.

He had been a soldier for nearly a third of his life; he had seen violence heaped upon violence; seen men rape and pillage without restraint. But never had he done so, nor even felt the temptation. And yet what he had felt that day in the study had frightened him. He had wanted, fleetingly, to teach Jack Coldwater a lesson; a lesson that had had little to do with Jack’s insults, and everything to do with raw dominance and power.

He had wanted Jack to pay the ultimate price.

But why
that
price?

Why not just kill him? That, he could have got away with. Murder done under the roof of the St. James Society, surrounded by the brotherhood—hell, they could have buried the bastard in their secret, underground chapel and none the wiser.

It was chilling to realize how near the truth Anisha was.

But never would he admit it. “You’re asking me to explain Jack Coldwater’s motivations,” he answered, evading the subject like another rut in the road, “something I’ve never been able to do. Isn’t that the very reason we’re going to Essex?”

Anisha cut a quick, assessing glance at him. “No, we’re going to see this Mr. Kemble who once had connections to the underworld,” she said. “We are going to see if he can tell us what Ned Quartermaine could not—the name of the person who so desperately wanted you hanged all those years ago. And that person was most assuredly
not
Coldwater. He can’t be a day over twenty-five.”

T
he home of Mr. George Jacob Kemble was an elegant Georgian manor house well northwest of the village, tucked into a crook of forestland that swept around it like a verdant embrace. It was the prettiest house Anisha had ever seen—once they actually found it, for the house stood at the end of a half-mile carriage lane and required them to ask further directions at an inn, a public house, and a cow byre, where a laconic farmer merely leaned on his pitchfork and pointed at a gap in the hedgerow.

After that, everything was a little
too
easy. At the end of the drive, a footman hastened down the front steps to take Rance’s horses well before they had drawn up. At the top of the staircase, a second man, a sort of butler, took their cards and swept out an arm, motioning down the polished marble passageway that bisected the opulent home from front to back.

“Theez way,
s’il vous plaît,
” he said. “Monsieur Kemble eez een hez rose garden.”

Anisha hesitated. “You will not wish to enquire of him first?”

“Eet eez not needed,
madame
.” The butler smiled almost patronizingly. “Monsieur Kemble has been expecting you.”

Rance and Anisha exchanged curious glances, then followed the man to a set of six French windows that opened onto a terrace. Here, a second flight of steps some thirty feet wide descended into a lush, formal garden. At the back, along the rear wall, Anisha could see a man in a dark coat atop a narrow ladder, snipping away at a climbing rose that was almost over the wall. A taller, silver-haired man was gingerly picking up the cuttings and dropping them into a wicker basket.

“Monsieur Kemble eez up there, madame,” he said, pointing at the ladder.

But the man had already noted their approach and descended, whereupon the tall gentleman spun him around to brush off his coat with short, impatient motions.

“ . . . never spare a thought, George, for the effort that goes . . .” Tart snippets carried on the breeze. “Five hundred stitches . . . just in that sleeve!”

But the dark man pushed past him, looking fixedly at Anisha as he stepped from the greenery and onto the stone path. She caught his gaze, and he smiled almost predatorily.

“Good Lord!” she murmured. “The man from the theater?”

Rance glanced down. “What man?”

But it was too late. Mr. Kemble had floated like a wraith across the last parterre. “Lady Anisha Stafford!” he murmured, bowing gracefully over her hand. “What an unlooked-for pleasure!”

“B-But your butler,” Anisha uttered, “—he said you were expecting us.”

“Lazonby,” Rance interjected, along with his hand. “At your service, sir.”

Mr. Kemble looked him up and down, his lips quirking a little. “Well, at last we meet,” he murmured. “Or perhaps I should say, at last we are introduced?”

Rance’s brow furrowed. “Have we met, sir?”

Kemble waved dismissively. “Oh, I used to see you round Town,” he said, “back before they hanged you.”

Just then the taller man cleared his throat. “George,
really
.”

Mr. Kemble urged him forward and introduced him as his friend, Maurice Giroux. Anisha recognized him as the second man seated in the Duke of Gravenel’s box at the Royal Opera House.

Giroux bowed over her hand. “I should put the kettle on,” he said with perhaps a hint of a Continental accent. “George, take them into the orangery. It’s private.”

“A lovely notion,” Kemble murmured, motioning them along the garden wall.

Anisha followed, taking his measure. He was a lithe, slender man—and a wealthy one, apparently, for his attire looked expensive and classically
à la mode
. Moving with a silky, catlike grace, he led them through the garden, politely remarking upon various features of the garden, casting breezy gestures this way and that.

Hyacinth. Hellebore. Hawthorne.
A trio of rare Asian lilies whose name Anisha couldn’t pronounce. All of it was lush and lovely, but rather than focus upon it, Anisha found herself wondering at Mr. Kemble’s
udaya lagna.
He was a water sign, almost certainly.
Karkata—
Cancer
—
most probably, for unless she missed her guess, Mr. Kemble had exquisite taste and a flair for the dramatic.

He was also many decades past his youth, for, though his skin bore few wrinkles, his temples were generously touched with silver, and there was an air of
ennui
about him.

A few yards along, the garden wall cornered left and became a sunny fruit wall espaliered with pear and plum. In the center a glass house jutted out, connected to the manor house by a long, vine-covered pergola. Here, their host threw open the door to a room filled with potted citrus trees and flowering shrubs, in the center of which sat a gurgling fountain, surrounded by an assortment of rattan furniture arranged upon a flagstone circle.

With the heavy weight of Rance’s hand at the small of her back, Anisha waded into the lush greenery, feeling instantly at home in the moist, delicious heat. “How lovely,” she murmured.

Mr. Kemble offered them the small wicker sofa. As soon as they were settled, he sat and turned the whole of his attention to her.

“So now you must tell me, Lady Anisha,” he said with an airy gesture, “how did you find
Les Huguenots
? Was it all you had hoped for?”

“I thought it marvelous. And you?”

Mr. Kemble sniffed. “Well, I’d seen the premier in Paris a dozen years ago, but Maurice is a great friend of Madame Dorus-Gras”—he dropped his voice—“who, frankly, has no business still playing Marguerite. My God, poor Julie’s
forty
if she’s a day—and working on a second chin!”

“Oh,” said Anisha. “I don’t think I could see that from my seat.”

“For my part,” Kemble continued, lifting one eyebrow, “I was more interested in dropping by
your
box.”

“You knew who I was?”

“My dear girl, I know who everyone is.” He paused to pluck a small, green thorn from his coat sleeve. “Besides, Anaïs had suggested the two of you might be by—which left me
most
intrigued, a thing sadly rare nowadays. But just as I began to contemplate the pleasure of your company, cheered as I was by the imminent departure of he-who-we-probably-oughtn’t-mention”—here, he shot her a saucy wink—“that buffoon Sir Wilfred turned up.”

“Sir
Wilfred
?” Rance interjected. “Sir Wilfred Leeton?”

“Oh, the very same, my lord,” said Kemble, rather too cheerfully. “I believe you have a passing acquaintance with the gentleman?”

But Rance was not looking at Kemble. He had turned to glower at Anisha. “I don’t like the sound of this,” he said grimly. “What, exactly, have you been up to?”

Anisha lifted both hands, palms out. “I just went to the theater.”

“With he-who-we-probably-oughtn’t-mention,” Kemble added, leaning in conspiratorially.

Rance’s glower expanded. “I am aware, sir, in whose company she went to the theater,” he snapped. “What I don’t understand is how Leeton came to be involved in it. And I’ll say again: I do not like the sound of it.”

“Heavens, my lord!” Mr. Kemble set his fingertips together. “Sir Wilfred is a pillar of our community. Surely you do not doubt his good character?”

After a heartbeat, Rance eased back against the sofa, his wide shoulders relaxing. “I’ve no quarrel with the fellow,” he answered. “But I know
exactly
what he is.”

At that, Kemble laughed, and Anisha wasn’t sure why. Moreover, Rance’s expression had not entirely relented.

“What, pray, was
I
to do?” She set a hand on his sleeve and felt his muscle flex beneath. “Send him away? The man seemed well-acquainted with Napier and—”

“Oops!” chirped Kemble. “There’s that unmentionable name!”

Rance shot Kemble a nasty look. “What, sir, is your point?”

Kemble looked positively waggish now. “Why, nothing at all!” Then his voice fell to a more serious tone. “But the two of you have not come all this way merely to gossip, I think?”

The room fell silent. “You understand, then, why we are here?” Rance finally said, his voice edged with reluctance.

“Oh, yes.” Kemble opened his hands expansively. “And I am but a happy tool of the Home Office.”

“And just why is that?” said Rance suspiciously.

Kemble made a vague motion. “Well, if I must confess, I’ve grown a little fond of de Vendenheim over the years,” he said. “Besides, when it comes to my business affairs, the Home Office has been looking the other way so long their necks are cricked.”

“Royden Napier works for the Home Office,” Rance pointed out.

“Not your half,” Kemble countered.

“I don’t have so much as a sliver,” Rance grumbled, “let alone half.”

Kemble laughed. “Oh, surely
I
need not explain the breadth of
Fraternitas
influence to
you,
” he chortled. “You’ve as good as got Napier’s . . . er . . . leash in hand now.”

Anisha’s eyes widened. The
Fraternitas
? Beyond the brotherhood, she’d never heard the name tossed casually out. Rance, however, didn’t flinch.

“Because Lady Bessett’s father is the Vicomte de Vendenheim?”

“Yes, Lord Lazonby,” said Mr. Kemble sardonically. “It is called
politics—
the game of kings—and one at which I, too, am most adept. So, shall we play?”

Anisha leaned intently forward. “We just need information—”

“Of which I am a veritable font,” said Kemble, expanding his hands.

“Fine, then,” said Rance grimly. “Tell us what your role was in London’s underworld.”

Kemble drew back, fingertips pressed to his chest. “But
underworld
is such a vile word,” he said. “It makes one think of . . . why, trolls. Or earthworms. I should rather refer to it as a sort of tertiary economic system—political bribery, of course, being second.”