The Golden Leopard (20 page)

“I was named for Shiva,” he said after a beat. “The Destroyer.”

She didn’t wait to hear any more.

It was early afternoon and he’d just brought down a black grouse—by accident, considering his lack of concentration—when a liveried footman arrived from High Tor and put a folded message in his hand. Scanning it, he swallowed a bitter laugh.

“Is there a problem?” John Pageter asked, coming up beside him.

“You could say that. I’d call it a disaster.”

The footman, a second message in his hand, had crossed to Arjuna. After reading it, Arjuna cast Duran a meaningful look and began assembling the rifles and appurtenances.

Duran turned back to Pageter. “I may be required to leave this afternoon. For London, I expect, but my recent guesses haven’t been paying off. If I can, I’ll send word where you can reach me.”

“And in the meantime . . . ?”

“Forget you know me, if you’re a man of good sense. I rather hope you are not.”

“On that you may safely rely. But unless you have plans to the contrary, I’d prefer to remain at High Tor for the time being. Most of what I’m able to do for you can be accomplished from here.”

“Yes.” Duran glanced around. Arjuna was already gone, assuming he would follow, and the Others were lurking somewhere nearby to make sure that he did. “Keep an eye on Jess . . . Lady Jessica, will you?”

“Of course.”

Pageter put out his hand and Duran took it, feeling something hard pressed against his palm before Pageter let go and turned away. Duran’s fingers closed over the gift, a ring, he could tell by the shape of it, something for him to sell in an emergency. On the way back to the house, while passing under a thick overhang of oak branches, he opened his hand and looked down at an engraved gold band set with a large, square-cut emerald.

A family heirloom, damn it all. He couldn’t pawn a bloody heirloom, and he’d have to figure a way to get it back to Pageter before Shivaji discovered it.

The gesture of friendship, though, he would always remember. “Always” being, in his case, not so taxing a commitment. In any case, he could not afford to indulge in sentimentality. Very shortly, he’d be face-to-face with a man who was emphatically not his friend.

Aubrey Carville, Lord Buckfast,
heir to the Earl of Sothingdon and consummate prig, was waiting with folded arms and a constipated expression in the entrance hall, flanked by a pair of broad-shouldered footmen. Duran wondered if they were there to protect the Sothingdon scion or toss the Duran devil into the nearest bog. Because it would annoy Aubrey, he produced an elaborate bow.

Predictably, the scion colored to the roots of his receding hairline. He had changed little since their only prior encounter, which took place in the private room at White’s Club where Duran had dragged the boy before he made a public and irrevocable mistake. Aubrey had been eighteen or nineteen then, already round as a watchtower and nearly as solid, his brown eyes blazing with conviction and rage. They were afire now as well, and his small white hands were fisted.

Still given to creating scenes, the scion, and Jessica might be in the house. “In the library,” Duran said, tossing his hat and gloves to the startled footmen. “Only the two of us . . . unless you’re afraid I mean to thrash you.”

That would do it, Duran thought, correctly. He heard Aubrey dismiss his bodyguards, although they’d probably been told to remain close to hand, and settled his hips on a mahogany desk to await developments.

Aubrey—Duran could never think of him as Buckfast—erupted into the library like a one-man cavalry charge. “Y-you,” he sputtered, “will leave here immediately. Your servants have packed. I’ve arranged for a coach. It’s in the back, as befits tradesmen and reprobates. How dare you come here? Does your word mean nothing to you?”

“Do I go, or do I answer?” Duran smiled at him. “And if I answer, with which question shall I begin?”

Aubrey had matured, to a degree. With visible effort, he stilled his hands and planted his feet on the parquet floor. “The last one. You swore to leave England without speaking again to my sister. But here you are, under the same roof.”

“To be precise, I agreed not to speak again to Lady Jessica before taking ship for India, or writing to her after I’d gone. There were no restrictions placed on what might happen if I came back.”

“That’s quibbling. You knew what I meant for you to do!”

“Yes. And I should never have consented to any of it. A snot-nosed boy, calling me out in front of twenty witnesses. If I hadn’t clapped a hand over your mouth before it went too far, neither of us could have honorably backed down. And that, my child, would have been the last of you.”

“Perhaps. But it was my duty to fight you. I should have done. If you’d killed me in a duel, you wouldn’t be here now.”

“Superb reasoning, as always. Do you mean to challenge me again? You may be sure that this time I won’t decline. And as your father can testify, I’m a roaring good shot.”

To Aubrey’s credit, he didn’t flinch. “I only challenge gentlemen,” he said. “Blackguards I expel from my house.”

“
Your
house? The present earl is, I believe, in excellent health. And partial to my company, by the way. I doubt he’ll evict me.”

“But he’ll thank me for doing so, when he learns that you have defiled his daughter. And when you are gone, we shall deal with her as she deserves.”

In a heartbeat, Duran was off the desk and halfway across the room. “
Deal
with her? Meaning what?”

“That is none of your concern. She has shamed the family. Now the family will contain the damage as best it can.”

“Trust me on this,” Duran said softly, gripping Aubrey’s neckcloth. “Say one insulting word to your father or anyone else about the Lady Jessica and I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.”

When Aubrey lowered his gaze, nodding, Duran let him go. It was a mistake.

“I wonder that you express an interest,” Aubrey said, adjusting his neckcloth. “A man of your stamp rarely cares what becomes of the women he whores.”

The next sound was Duran’s fist against Aubrey’s jaw, followed by the thud of Aubrey’s head against the wall. He hung there for a moment, slack-jawed, a thin line of blood trickling down his chin. Then his eyes turned up in his head, his knees buckled, and he slid slowly to the floor, leaving a trail of red on the green brocade wallpaper.

Duran, longing to hit him again, took two circuits of the room to cool his temper. A quick, clean exit seemed the best of the unsavory options on the menu. He bound Aubrey hand and foot with twine from the desk drawer, stuffed his handkerchief in the open mouth, secured it with twine, and tugged the limp body behind the desk. After some thought he wrapped a pair of warming rugs around Aubrey’s arms and legs to keep him from thumping against anything loudly enough to draw attention.

The scion’s heartbeat was strong and his breathing steady. All too soon, he’d be making trouble again.

Duran’s hand was on the latch before he remembered the footmen. Damn. He grabbed a book from the nearest shelf, opened the door, and made a polite remark to the supposedly conscious Aubrey before closing it behind him.

A passing chambermaid gave him another chance to fend off an immediate investigation. “Lord Buckfast wishes a refreshment tray brought to the library in half an hour,” he told her loudly. “For two. Lady Jessica will be joining him.”

“But Lady Jessica is not at home, milord.”

Damn again. No opportunity to speak with her before he left. “She is due back shortly, or so Lord Buckfast has said. Perhaps you should check with him at, say, three o’clock. He is dealing with matters of business and will not wish to be disturbed before then.”

After a curtsy, the girl returned to her dusting while Duran went to the stairs and mounted them in a hurry.

When he arrived at his bedchamber, the last of the luggage was being carried out. Shivaji was nowhere in sight, thank God. He crossed immediately to the writing desk and began composing a message to Jessica.

Not long after, soundless as smoke, Shivaji materialized beside him. “What has become of the young man?”

Having considerable trouble wording his note, Duran looked up in annoyance. “I put him out of the way for the time being. He will probably recover.”

“To bring charges? You forget yourself. Our mission cannot prosper under the attention of the authorities.”

“That’s the least of my concerns.” After some thought, Duran wrote the direction of the rooms they had occupied in Little Russell Street, on the chance they’d be returning to them now. Asking Shivaji didn’t seem like a good idea. He added that at his first opportunity, he would dispatch a longer letter explaining the abrupt departure. Should he apologize?

“Where is he now?”

“Who?” Duran rubbed his forehead. “Oh. In the library, behind the desk, bound and gagged.”

“I will see to him,” Shivaji said, a touch of resignation in his tone. “Go to the coach.”

“In a minute. This is important.”

“Sign it and go, or you will be carried there.”

I’m sorry,
he scribbled as Shivaji left the room.
Find a little faith in your heart for me, Jessie. Give me a chance to tell you what happened.

He nearly signed his first name, thinking it would sound more personal. More sincere. But she had never used that name with him, not even when they made love. If he trotted it out now, she was bound to be suspicious. Duran, he wrote, chilled. Once lost, sincerity—like virginity—could never be reclaimed.

After slipping the folded, sealed note under Jessica’s door, he used the servants’ stairs to the ground floor and arrived in the courtyard to find Shivaji already there, Arjuna at his side. All too quickly the coach was on its way to London, leaving Jessica and all his hopes behind.