The Bride Wore Pearls (42 page)

Lady Bessett’s color drained as the last willow contraption fell away. “Oh,” she murmured weakly. “Oh, heavens. I take your point.” She turned to beam down at the boys. “Well, that was quite a lark, wasn’t it, lads? But best take those back to Brogden, eh? For safekeeping?”

After picking up their wooden swords, the boys went glumly through the back gate in the direction of the mews. The ladies set off down the garden path arm in arm. Despite the fright, Anisha was very glad to see her new friend.

Inside the conservatory, Luc was still wallowing in misery.

“Out!” said Anisha as he staggered to his feet. “Go upstairs to bed.”

After bowing and scraping and kissing Lady Bessett’s hand, Luc went, his gutta-percha bag tucked behind his back. At least he had the good grace to be ashamed of his condition.

Anisha rang for tea, and they settled into the deep rattan chairs amidst the ferns and palms. The setting reminded Anisha of her odd visit to Mr. Kemble’s, and once more hope stirred. She opened her mouth to tell Lady Bessett all about it, but her guest spoke first.

“I’m so sorry we frightened you,” she said just as Milo sailed back onto Anisha’s shoulder and took up his battle with the earbobs again. “Good heavens!
That
is a big parrot!”

“Actually, he’s just a parakeet,” said Anisha. “I found him in my garden along the Hooghly River. He was no bigger than a teacup.”

Lady Bessett drew back an inch. “Does he . . . talk?”

“
Pretty, pretty!
” Milo declared. “
Help, help! British prisoner! Let-me-out!
”

“Oh, my!” Lady Bessett set her fingers to her mouth, her eyes dancing. “Do the cats trouble him?”

“Oh, not anymore,” declared Anisha. “But let’s talk about you. How do you find married life, my dear?”

Lady Bessett grinned shamelessly. “Ooh, I find it very nice indeed,” she said in a low undertone. “In fact, I think it vastly
under
-rated, if you know what I mean.”

“I daresay I do,” said Anisha on a spurt of laughter. “Congratulations, then. You have chosen well.”

Her smile deepening, Lady Bessett leaned conspiratorially nearer. “And what of yourself?” she asked. “Have you brought the dashing Lord Lazonby to heel yet?”

For an instant, Anisha grappled for words. “I am not sure such a thing is possible,” she finally answered. “I fear he is not much amenable to a leash.”

At that, Lady Bessett laughed—and in a most unladylike fashion, too. For an instant, Anisha wondered how she got on with Lady Madeleine MacLachlan, who was grace and elegance personified. But she had not long to wonder. All was well, it seemed.

“Mamma asked me to go with the two of you to Lady Leeton’s party on Monday,” Lady Bessett said when the tea had been brought. “But I wish to spend some time with my parents before they leave again.”

“So she has asked you to call her Mamma,” said Anisha, who had never been invited to address her mother-in-law as anything—not even Mrs. Stafford. “You must account yourself fortunate to have such a welcome.”

“Oh, I do!” said Lady Bessett earnestly. “Bessett has some hope, I believe, that she will prove a civilizing influence on me. And I begin to hope so, too, quite honestly.” She paused to catch her lip in her teeth. “Your little gesture in the garden just now—oh,
that
swiftly brought me to the realization that my life has altered.”

“Indeed, it has,” Anisha agreed, passing her a cup of tea. “I’m sorry you can’t go with us to the party.”

“I did get to meet Hannah Leeton,” Lady Bessett confided. “Mamma and I went with her yesterday to Regent Street to choose the bunting colors for the bandstand.” Then her shoulders fell a little. “The color theme is yellow and white. I tried to pretend I cared, but I haven’t many feminine virtues, I fear.”

Anisha set down her tea and reached out to pat the younger woman’s hand. “You have all the feminine virtues your husband requires,” she said, “or he would not have married you so swiftly. He is an excellent judge of character.”

Lady Bessett looked up a little dewy-eyed. “And he thinks so highly of you, too!” she cried. “And you have been so terribly kind to me . . .”

Suddenly Anisha got the dreadful sense that the young lady was at last going to apologize for stealing her fiancé. “Well, enough of that,” she said hastily. “May I buy you anything in the stalls Monday? I mean to purchase a new lace fichu and some other fripperies for Janet. She may be leaving me soon for a new life.”

“Oh!” Lady Bessett set her cup abruptly down. “That’s
precisely
why I came by!”

Anisha felt her brow furrow. “About Janet—?”

“No, no, about the Leetons’ maid. The girl’s mother fell ill and they sent her off to Chester on the mail coach yesterday.” At Anisha’s blank look, she added, “The maid who is the gypsy fortune-teller.”

“Oh, yes! To raise funds for the charity.”

“Indeed, she’s done it for years—Hannah had a little red tent made for her and everything. People have come to quite count on it.” Lady Bessett rang her hands a little. “Hannah was almost in tears. And then Madeleine said—”

“Yes?” Anisha’s odd feeling shifted.

Again, Lady Bessett snared her lip. “You mightn’t like this,” she went on, “but Madeleine—I mean
Mamma
—told her that perhaps you might be persuaded to do it . . . with palms, I mean. Not the crystal ball.”

“Good heavens!” Anisha set her teacup down with a discordant clatter. “Surely not?”

Lady Bessett winced. “Geoff must have told her you study palmistry,” she answered. “I think, honestly, that even after all these years of struggling to raise him, she does not quite understand the Gift. She knows, of course, that it is not a parlor trick, but she cannot quite grasp—”

Anisha threw up a hand. “I don’t have any sort of
Gift,
” she swiftly interjected. “My mother was skilled in certain arts, and yes, she and my aunt taught me much. But
hasta samudrika shastra
is based on science, and ideally used in concert with
Jyotish
. Neither is a trivial thing. And done properly, they take hours.”

“I
know—
!” Lady Bessett wailed. “But Hannah’s face just lit up! And I couldn’t think what to tell Mamma. So I thought, you see, I’d best come round myself so she didn’t spring it on you tomorrow.” She stopped and sighed deeply. “You might just say you’ve the headache,” she advised. “Or perhaps you could just pretend to read palms?”

Anisha sighed. “I’m not sure that would be ethical,” she said, almost to herself.

Still, it
was
for a worthy cause. Moreover, there were always a few basic things one could honestly tell a person without a great deal of analysis. Just a little something—the sort of thing she’d done in the garden that afternoon for Lady Bessett.

But the thought left her a little breathless. The awful truth was, Anisha had studied no one’s hand seriously since that frightful day so many months ago when she had looked at Grace’s. Grace had not been Anisha’s sister-in-law then but rather Tom and Teddy’s governess—and, Anisha had correctly guessed, Raju’s lover. But Grace had also been Anisha’s dear friend. And she had been in terrible trouble.

With Grace, Anisha had been most thorough, beginning by charting her stars in detail. Then one day she had come upon Grace in the schoolroom as Luc had been taking the boys out for cricket. Anisha had rung for tea and had all but forced Grace to submit her hands.

Grace, ever good-natured, had done so.

It had begun innocently enough. Anisha had been curious about the prospects for marriage and children; she had hoped for both between Grace and her brother. But despite her benign intentions, a strange and horrible thing had happened. Anisha had had a vision; an almost out-of-body experience. It was as if the blood had drained from her extremities and her mind had gone to another place. With horrific, bone-chilling clarity, she had seen the danger Grace had faced.

And yet, as so often was the case, it had been a symbolic sort of clarity; one she had struggled mightily to interpret.

Her mother would not have struggled. Her mother had had no fear of trances or deep meditation, or even of visions. She had known their value, their interpretations, and how to use them all as the tools they’d been, with great skill and calm.

Anisha had not been calm. She had been terrified. And when she had come out of it—whatever
it
had been—it had been to find she’d still held Grace’s hands across the schoolroom table. It had seemed like mere moments, but it had been . . . only God knew how long. But the tea had gone stone-cold, and neither she nor Grace had felt the time pass.

And then Anisha had done the worst thing of all. By misinterpreting the signs, she had very nearly sent Grace to her death.

Afterward—after Raju and Mr. Napier had saved Grace and put everything to rights again—it had quickly dawned on Anisha that she would never be what her mother had been, a gifted
rishika.
Her mother was gone and Anisha was here, left like some inadequate chef-in-training, with too many sharp knives in her kitchen block and not nearly enough real knowledge. She had studied just long enough to be dangerous.

“You aren’t going to do it, are you?” Lady Bessett’s voice cut into her thoughts.

Anisha lifted her eyes to her guest’s earnest gaze, and thought of all that Geoff’s mother had done for her—and all that she had been willing to do. To accept her warmly into the MacLachlan family as Geoff’s bride. To help her make her way in polite society. And the latter she was doing anyway, despite the fact that her son had married elsewhere.

Anisha lowered her hands into her lap, crushing her skirts. “How could I disappoint Lady Madeleine?” she finally said. “Giving a little advice would do no harm, I daresay. But I cannot draw any real conclusions. They mightn’t be accurate.”

But the warning was muffled, for Lady Bessett had already leapt up and rushed across the room to hug her.

“Oh, Anisha,
thank
you!” she cried.

“You’re welcome,” said Anisha into a crush of blue muslin.

A
s the terminus of the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway, Brighton Station was a wide and soaring temple of modernity, with every imaginable convenience within. At an hour fast approaching nightfall, the gaslight had been fired, casting the capacious space in a ghostly glow as the last train from London Bridge came clattering in amidst a shriek of metal and a haze of smoke.

Rance stepped down onto the platform as passengers and porters surged round the cast-iron columns like froth, washed past him, then branched into streams and rivulets as they trickled toward exits, vendors, and ticket windows. Portmanteau in hand, Rance moved with more deliberation, his eyes scanning the crowd ahead.

As he strode past, a locomotive on the opposite platform sounded a shrill whistle, blasting smoke into the air. In response, a few black-suited businessmen began to toss aside newspapers and drift toward the platform, intent on boarding the last train back to London. Ahead, toddling toward the exit, a gaggle of children followed their nanny, the latter waving for a porter to bear their trunks away, most probably down the hill to one of the many guesthouses that lined the seashore.

Seeing no one familiar, Rance wove his way toward a wide portal marked Trafalgar Street
.
After passing beneath an elegant colonnade, he emerged into a broad, carriage-filled lane bounded on one side by a massive wall, passing between a pair of hawking newsboys as he did so.

“ ’
Earld
! Get yer ’
Earld
’ere!” bellowed the first.

The second, more resourceful, drowned him out with, “Clipper sinks off Ivory Coast!
Brighton Gazette
! Survivors speak!”

Just then, a gig with a gray horse set off from the curb in a clatter, and beyond the first lad’s shoulder, Rance saw Samir Belkadi uncross his arms and come away from a sputtering lamppost. His stride long and sure, the young man dashed between drays and carriages to meet him on the pavement, pressing a slip of paper into Rance’s palm as he did so.

“You found Blevins?” Rance kept his voice low.

“
Oui,
at home,” said Belkadi. “The good doctor knew all the hotels—and, more importantly, all the lodging houses. It required us but one day’s searching to find your Mr. Hedge.”

Rance unfolded the paper. It was an address in George Street.

“A lodging house catering to invalids,” said Belkadi. “Retired sea captains and the like. Run by a woman named Ford. The street is just past the Royal York, not far from here. I booked you a suite of rooms and bespoke dinner.”

Rance shook his head. “I’ve no appetite,” he said. “I should rather go straight to this fellow.”

“
Non.
” Belkadi set a restraining hand on his sleeve. “Blevins knows the proprietor and made inquiries. Hedge is old, frail, and requires much laudanum to sleep at night. He will be of no use to you until morning—if then.”