The Bride Wore Pearls (4 page)

Then she realized, suddenly, the obvious. That she had just shot the messenger and now burned to sink her claws into the arrogant ass that had sent him.

“Sergeant Welham,” she said a little loudly.

“
Umph
—?” His head jerked up, his elegant hat tumbling onto his lap. “We there?”

“No, I merely wish to beg your pardon,” she said. “I spoke wrongly. I’m angry with my brother. And you have been all kindness. I am sorry.”

“Hmm,” he said again, slapping the hat back on.

“Now this lovely old church we are passing,” she said, “what is it called?”

“Oh, overdone, my dear,” he said darkly. “You have no interest in tourist attractions, I seem to recall.”

She blinked her eyes twice, slowly. “I see you do not mean to let me out of this graciously,” she said. “I deserve it, I daresay.”

“St. Clement, then.” His voice was gruff. “It is called St. Clement Danes.”

“And would it be your church?” she asked conversationally.

“Lord, no.” He lifted both his dark, slashing eyebrows. “Besides, London has a thousand, and I haven’t darkened a church door in . . . aye, well, I don’t know how long.” Suddenly, his shoulders fell, and he scrubbed a hand almost pensively around his jaw. “I will do, though, before long, I fear. And far too soon, at that.”

Anisha realized at once what he was speaking of. Welham’s father, Raju had written, was dying.

“I was sorry to hear about your father,” she murmured. “My brother’s last letter reached me in Lisbon. He said the Earl of Lazonby’s health had collapsed.”

“Aye, broken down by his years of suffering,” said Welham grimly, “and his unrelenting efforts to get my conviction overturned.”

“I am so very sorry,” she said again. “Raju says the title will go to you. I’m sure you take no pleasure in it.”

“Aye, but I shall have a few more months, if God is kind,” he said, his eyes no longer smiling. “And no, I take no pleasure whatever from it. He is scarcely sixty, and now we’re both to be cheated of his last years—and someone, eventually, is going to pay for it.”

Anisha had no answer to that. Moreover, she had no doubt he meant it. Welham looked like a man who made promises, not idle threats.

Welham turned his gaze to the window, staring out almost blindly. With the wintery light casting a shadow beneath his cleanly chiseled cheekbone, his profile held such a stark, hard beauty she scarcely recognized the laughing man who had stepped into her cabin this morning. And that mouth—oh, that lush, lovely mouth! It was the only thing that softened him; saved him, perhaps.

Ruthlessly, Anisha forced her gaze away, heat rushing over her. Good Lord, she was not some grass-green goose of a girl to be swayed by a man, no matter his rugged good looks—and she sensed enough of human nature to recognize torment and trouble when she saw it in the flesh.

She turned to the opposite window and tried to think of what was to come. It was spitting an icy rain now, the promise of the pink sunrise having turned to leaden skies with a wind that thrashed the bare tree branches and whistled through the carriage door. Suddenly her vague longing for India turned into a bone-deep ache, and she was terrified she had made an irrevocable mistake.

The dread had not lifted when, just a few minutes later, the vehicle slowed to a halt, drawing between a pair of massive, lamped gateposts and round the semicircular drive of a grand, porticoed mansion set a little back from the street. Reluctantly, she picked up her reticule, then drew her cloak a little tighter, as if doing so might ward off the inevitable.

Carrying somber black umbrellas, a trio of liveried servants came in lockstep down the sweeping staircase, putting Anisha a little in mind of a firing squad. Her trepidation must have sketched across her face, for at once Rance Welham caught her hand and carried it to his lips.

“Courage, my dear,” he said softly. “Your brother awaits. Your new life awaits. And you have all of two months before the London Season begins.”

She felt her eyes widen. “The London Season?”

“At which time you will set society on its ear with your beauty,” he went on, his smile firmly back in place.

For an instant, she hesitated. “Sergeant Welham,” she finally said, drawing her hand from his, “let us be realistic, even if my brother cannot. London society will tolerate me, yes. But they will have about as much real interest in a mixed-blood army widow as
I
shall have in
them
.”

“I would not have thought you such a coward, Lady Anisha,” he said, his smile muted.

“I am not—” She exhaled sharply, crushing her reticule to her lap with both hands. “I am
not
a coward, Sergeant,” she finally said. “I am just . . . different. That is all.”

“Just
different
?” he softly echoed. “Oh, aye, my dear. Now
that
you surely are.”

But Welham’s brilliant blue eyes were once again smiling, his true nature once again hidden.

Chapter 2

From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,

That I have passed . . .

William Shakespeare,
Othello

A
s so often happens with most of life’s dreaded changes, what felt at first to Lady Anisha like an almost intolerable upheaval became quickly drowned out by a bucket brigade of small, day-to-day disasters. There were tutors and maids and music masters to hire. Tom and Teddy required cloaks, coats, and all manner of woolens to ward off the frightful English chill. The crate containing the boys’ pressed leaf collection and
Encyclopedia Britannica
had vanished into thin air. The bird did not like Raju’s cats.

The cats, on the other hand, liked the bird
very
well indeed.

And then there were Raju’s bullheaded notions of society and marriage to be dispensed with—a notion that Anisha did not, perhaps, crush as thoroughly or as ruthlessly as she ought to have done. . . .

Still, for good or ill, London blew over her like a Bengali cyclone, beginning the moment Rance Welham handed her down from his carriage, leaving Anisha little time to fret, or even to mourn her beloved home, and she soon became, if not inured to her new life, then at least accustomed to it—all while scarcely realizing the change was occurring.

And in this way, winter turned to spring and summer to autumn, until one day Lady Anisha awoke to realize her first year in London had long since passed, and with it, much of the storm. The boys had fallen into something like a routine. Lucan had fallen in with a cadre of dashing young blades—and their raffish ways. After despairing of Lucan and throwing up his hands, Raju had shocked everyone by falling in love with the boys’ governess.

And Anisha—well, fool that she was,
she
had fallen just a little bit in lust with Rance Welham, the newly invested Earl of Lazonby.

But it was so very hard not to when his eyes were so teasing, his smile so enigmatic, and his hidden depths so intriguingly beyond her reach. And he was—just as he’d professed—an incorrigible flirt, at least outwardly. A dozen times Anisha had entertained the notion of something more than mere flirtation, but each time womanly instinct had warned her away.

And then had come that day, some months past, when she’d come upon him unawares and realized with a stark and sudden clarity that perhaps her instincts had warned her away for a very good reason. That perhaps his flirtations really were meaningless; his depths farther beyond her reach than even she had imagined.

Lazonby was thirty-five years old, and there was no woman in his life—nor had there ever been, so far as she knew. And Anisha had begun to wonder if she now understood why; if perhaps his passions drove him in an altogether different direction.

But it almost didn’t matter, for he was her brother’s dearest friend—and her friend, too. More than friendship, however? No. Lord Lazonby was too closed off inside; too obsessed with his mad, furious notions of truth and revenge. And Anisha was wise enough to know a façade when she saw one; wise enough to know that on some level, she really didn’t know him at all, and likely never would.

So Anisha had looked about for something to distract her from those dancing, devilish eyes. And as a result, she had proceeded to do what she now feared was a very foolish thing. She had listened to her brother.

She had done precisely what she’d told Lazonby she
would
not
do.

Irritated by the recollection, Anisha plopped a huge pat of butter in the middle of her kedgeree. The fact that she did not particularly like the dish—and certainly never added extra butter—seemed this morning to have escaped her. She stabbed into it with a vicious relish.

At the opposite side of the breakfast table, Lucan lowered his head and eyed her warily across his eggs. After cutting him a decidedly irritated glance—perhaps the third or fourth of the morning—Anisha began to chew. A small part of her was angry; not with him but with Raju.

She had come here in large part for Lucan’s sake, so that their elder might give the young man a bit of gentlemanly direction—or at least a hard boot in the arse. Now here she was in London, still staring at Luc over breakfast, and Raju was off on a months-long wedding trip.

So today was decidedly
not
the day for Lucan to ask for money.

Again.

But he had.

Men, she had begun to believe, were nothing but a plague.

But Lucan was still looking at her across the breakfast table from beneath his sweep of long, almost feminine eyelashes. Lady Anisha slammed down her fork with an ominous clatter.

“Stop it
,
Luc,” she warned. “Do not dare look at me with those great, pitiful eyes. I shan’t do it, I tell you. Just because Raju has gone abroad does not mean I have suddenly lost my spine, for I quite assure you I did not need him to shore it up. I am quite put out with you all on my own.”

Lucan hung his head another notch lower. “Just a loan, Nish, until Midsummer’s Day?” he pleaded. “Just enough to—”

“To what?” she snapped. “To pay off your bookmaker? Your haberdasher? Your mistress? Let me remind you that in the last year or better, you have frittered away every penny of your allowance and once even landed yourself in a sponging house. And but for my mercy, there you would still likely be.”

“No, I’d have graduated to debtor’s prison as Raju intended,” he said glumly.

“As I’m painfully aware.” Anisha shoved away her tea with the back of her hand. “So I got you out. And at extortionate terms, too.
And
I suffered Raju’s wrath for my efforts. So yes, pray do not let it come to that again. Well, go on. What is it this time?”

“Baccarat,” he muttered into his plate. “At the Quartermaine Club. And now there’s nothing else for it. I must behave as a gentleman ought, and you know it as well as I. The nabob stench is still near enough to draw flies.” His voice turned grim. “And I will
not
have it said, Anisha. Not of me, and certainly not of
you
.”

It was Anisha’s turn to look away—not that she was ashamed of what she was. She was inordinately proud of it. And yet she was weary of thinking about it.

Absently, she picked at the pleated silk of her gold and turquoise skirts, her thin gold bracelets faintly tinkling as she did so. It was true some might have called their father a nabob, for like so many of his ilk, he’d gone off to India merely comfortable and come back shockingly rich. Half diplomat and all business, Anisha’s father had left his children very well provided for indeed. But that did not give Lucan cause to live like a wastrel.

Unlike Anisha and Raju, Lucan was the product of her father’s second marriage; a marriage made out of love, not politics, as his first had been. Pamela had been as pure as an English rose. She had been kind, too, and doting. Too much so, perhaps, for she had spoiled Lucan beyond reason. And yet Anisha loved Lucan; loved him as much as, and in some ways more than, she loved Raju, for Pamela had died too young, leaving Lucan to need his sister in a way that her elder never had.

Just as he needed her now.

And she would help him, of course. But she was not about to make it easy on him. Anisha bit her lip, trying to think what was best done.

“Nish,” Lucan’s wary tone cut into her thoughts. “Nish, you’re chewing your lip again. Now
promise
me you aren’t thinking of speaking to Ned Quartermaine. I should simply die of embarrassment.”

Her mind suddenly made up, Anisha pushed back her chair with a harsh scrape. “I cannot loan you money again, Luc,” she said firmly. “I cannot, for you never learn anything from it. Nor will I speak with Mr. Quartermaine on your behalf. I can, however, be persuaded to bargain—and bargain like a good Scot, be warned.”

“Aye, hard and relentless, you mean.” Lucan sighed and dragged a hand through a shock of what had been, until that moment, flawlessly pomaded gold curls. “But please, Nish, I beg you. Don’t make me play nanny again! Tom and Teddy—they are—good God! They are beyond me! If they aren’t jumping half-naked into the Serpentine or darting through traffic in Piccadilly Circus, then the day holds no challenge for them.”

“Oh no, I don’t want you buying yourself out of indentured servitude again.” Anisha eyed him assessingly across the mahogany table, then slid her bracelets pensively back up her arm. “So I think neither a loan nor a bargain will do this time.”

Lucan exhaled and fell back against his chair.

“No, this time,” she said, ignoring his sigh of relief, “we shall have a clean, outright transaction.”

“A transaction?” Lucan jerked upright again, eyes narrowing warily. “Of what sort?”

Anisha’s wide, amiable mouth curled slowly into a smile. “Your new curricle,” she murmured. “The high-perch phaeton, I mean, with the pretty red wheels? I confess, it does catch one’s eye.”

“My
phaeton
?” His eyes widened in horror. “Surely you cannot mean it! Whatever would you do with—”

“And the horses,” Anisha continued, undeterred. “Those lovely, prancing blacks? Yes, I think I should like to have them, too.”

But Lucan had begun to sputter. “My matched blacks? You must be mad. Why, I spent two days straight at hazard to win those off Frankie Fitzwater! Besides, no lady of fashion would dare drive such a team.”

“Do you suggest I cannot?” Anisha arched one eyebrow.

“Well, no, you’re a fine whip—for a woman—but . . .”

“And do you suddenly take me for a lady of fashion?”

“I—well, what I meant was—”

“Come now, Lucan.” Anisha stood, drawing herself up to her full height—which was something less than five feet. “I think we both know that London’s fashionable set scarcely spares me a second glance.”

Lucan’s eyes glittered. “But Lord Bessett’s mother does,” he warned.

But Anisha would not be cowed. “Lady Madeleine is neither here nor there,” she replied, tossing down her napkin. “She’s a good friend to me, no more.”

“Ha!” Lucan threw his arms over his chest. “So you are not in love with him?”

“Good Lord, Luc! Do not be ridiculous.”

“But you
are
going to marry him.” Lucan lifted his chin almost challengingly.

“I might,” she said coolly. “Or I might not. I have not yet consulted the stars.”

Lucan gave a dismissive grunt. “Stars or no, Raju told Aunt Pernicia you were, just before he left on his wedding trip—specifically, that as soon as Lord Bessett returned from his
Fraternitas
business in Brussels, our family would have ‘a happy event’ to announce.”

Inwardly, Anisha cursed her own stupidity, as well as Raju’s big mouth. Lucan’s Aunt Pernicia was Pamela’s much-elder sister, a venerated member of the
ton,
and a gossiping old tabby. And Bessett was one of London’s most eligible bachelors.

But Anisha maintained her cool posture. “Well, Raju isn’t here now, is he?” she said, setting both hands on the table and leaning into him. “So the only happy event you’d better be anticipating is the payment of your gaming debts—
before
either Claytor writes Raju or Aunt Pernicia catches wind of it.”

Lucan’s cheeks flushed bright crimson.

Anisha forced a sugary smile. “Now what is it to be, my dear? Social ruin? A fraternal flogging? Or that shiny new phaeton?”

Lucan threw up his hands, but any comment he might have made was forestalled by the entrance of their butler.

Higgenthorpe gave a tight bow at the neck. “I beg your pardon, my lady,” he said, “but Claytor is in his lordship’s study with some papers which require your signature.”

Claytor, her brother’s secretary, handled all the family’s business affairs. Lady Anisha sighed and glanced down at her attire. As no guests had been expected, she was dressed for the privacy of her home, and in the comfort of the traditional clothing she often favored.

Today Anisha had thrown on an old
lehenga cholis
, a diaphanous skirt and short tunic that had been her mother’s, both heavily embroidered with fine gold thread. To ward off the English chill, however, she’d tossed over it a plain cashmere shawl such as any English lady might have worn. Like her odd collection of jewelry, the combination was a metaphor, she supposed, for the whole of her life.

She folded her hands serenely in front of her. “I should go up to change,” she replied. “Kindly ask him to wait.”

The butler bowed again and turned as if to go.

At the last instant, however, Anisha frowned. “Higgenthorpe, you’ve dark smudges under your eyes,” she said. “You are struggling to sleep again?”

The butler’s smile was wan. “I fear so, ma’am.”

“Your
vata dosha,
” she murmured. “You have an imbalance again. I will make a mustard oil for your feet, but you must rub it on each night before bed. Will you?”

“Of course,” he said swiftly. “And the powder, ma’am? For my milk?”