The Golden Leopard (30 page)

It was the third day
of their journey, and as she often did, Jessica had snuggled against him for an afternoon nap. He didn’t allow her much sleep at night, nor did she seem to want him to, and she had overcome her resistance to sporting in the carriage. If not for Shivaji’s quelling presence, he could almost forget they weren’t on their wedding trip.

When the coach turned onto a long drive shaded with tall lime trees, he gently shook her awake. Sleepy-eyed, Jessica straightened her hair and scrubbed her face with a cloth dipped in water from a canteen while he studied the card of information provided by Helena.

“A widow,” Jessica said as he handed her from the coach. “It surprised me to see her name on the list. I had not thought her interested in antiquities from India, but perhaps her husband was a collector.”

The answer came over a tea tray. “Oh dear,” said Lady Glinth, raising apologetic blue eyes to her guests. “It’s
Italian
antiquities I collect, as did Lord Glinth. But of course, his handwriting always was indecipherable. For the most part, he limited his interest to Etruscan artifacts.”

“Indeed?” Jessica sat forward, her eyes alight. “It happens that I have a client in search of an Etruscan necklace. Have you any you’d be willing to part with?”

Etruscan jewelry?
They had wandered rather far afield, Duran was thinking as Lady Glinth escorted them to a room crowded with display cases.

“If only I had brought the drawing he sent me,” Jessica said, clearly displeased with herself. “But the pattern was distinctive, and I remember it fairly well.”

There were six or seven waist-high, glass-topped cases crammed with jewelry, but Jessica found nothing that matched what she was looking for until the widow unlocked a drawer and pulled out a baize-lined box.

“Ethan kept his favorites in here,” said Mrs. Glinth. “I never could understand why he hid the pieces he most enjoyed looking at. What good are they in a box?”

“This is very like the drawing,” Jessica exclaimed, untangling a heavy gold circlet studded with lapis lazuli. “But I’m ashamed to say I have failed to do the proper research. Do you know its value? And if my client is still interested, would you be willing to sell it?”

“Indeed I would. There’s a new roof to be paid for. Besides, collecting was Ethan’s passion, not mine. Shortly before his death, he had an appraisal of his finest things done by Malcolm Fife. Will that help?”

“He’s exactly the man I’d have consulted,” Jessica said. “I’m sure Lord Philpot would accept his evaluation.”

“Philpot? You mean the baron, Darius Philpot, from Somersetshire? My Ethan was at Eton with him. More than half a century ago, to be sure. We . . .
I
 . . .
have not seen Darius for this last decade or more. What a coincidence, though. Only Monday last I read a notice concerning him in the
Times.
He’d been called to his Somerset estate on account of Lady Philpot’s illness. The implication was that she hadn’t long to live.”

“It
will
work!”
Jessica said, jabbing at the map with her pencil. “Lord Philpot’s estate is southwest of Bath, near to Glastonbury.” Another jab. “We are here, just beyond Cambridge.”

“And heading due north,” Duran pointed out, not pleased where her schemes were about to take him. “Keep in mind, I’m not the one you have to convince.”

“I needn’t trouble to convince either of you. If Shivaji refuses to alter the route—”

“Backtrack, you mean. What is it? A hundred miles?”

“Not so far as that.”

But it might be even farther, he knew. Since they’d settled again in the coach and she’d pulled out her maps and lists, she had been calculating routes, not distances.

“We’ll lose time at the outset,” she conceded. “But once I’ve delivered the necklace, we’ll simply reverse the order of the calls on our list. We can do the western locations on our way north and finish up in the southeast. What difference does it make?”

A great deal. Her revised plan would put him a long way from any useful port just when he needed to be near one. “None,” he managed to say after too long a silence. “But our schedule is overfull as it is, and changing course will eat up time we cannot spare. Besides, what is the urgency about this necklace? Can’t you post it to her, or take it to her later? I don’t mean to sound heartless, but if Lady Philpot is ill, she won’t be wearing it any time soon. And if she dies, she won’t need it at all.”

The look she turned on him would have reduced paper to cinders. “I shall pretend I did not hear that. And if you refuse to support me in this, I shall simply leave you to continue the leopard hunt while I secure passage on a mail coach.”

Desperate men say stupid things, he was thinking even as he did so. “Need I remind you that four days ago, you vowed to obey me?”

“Poppycock. You must be thinking of some other female. I would never promise obedience to a man who takes orders from his
valet.
”

He realized, belatedly, that it was time to do some backtracking of his own. “Look, Jessie, it’s obvious this means a great deal to you. If you would explain—”

“If you would trust me, no explanation would be required.”

With interest, he watched her blush to the roots of her hair.

“I admit,” she said in a subdued tone, “that after my mortifying behavior in the church, it is possible that my credibility is somewhat—”

“Reduced to mincemeat?”

“Open to question! But as you are determined to be provoking and recalcitrant for no plausible reason . . . Or have you one? In fairness, I ought to ask.”

Not one he could admit to, although the border separating his promise that Jessica would not help him to escape Shivaji and his wish to inform her of his intention to escape Shivaji was becoming somewhat blurred.
Knowing
was not
helping,
precisely. But it was conducive, he supposed, to eliciting help. Damn and blast. This sort of moral tiptoeing was not within his compass. “I’ll not stand in your way,” he said at length. “But you must deal with Shivaji on your own.”

“Why not?” She took a fresh sheet of paper and began sketching out the proposed change of route. “
I
am not afraid of him.”

Half an hour later, munching on a sausage roll at the posthouse where they’d stopped to change horses, he watched Jessica circle the expressionless Shivaji like a whirlpool engorging an island. Now and again she paused to show him something on her map or one of her lists. She’d dropped one, and the breeze had carried it across the courtyard, but she failed to notice. All her attention was on her argument, which beat against Shivaji’s silent resistance like a wave against a rock. In time, of course, she could wear him down, but time was the one thing none of them had.

Resignation settling like a boulder in his belly, Duran tossed the remains of his pie to a delighted mongrel and sauntered into the fray. “We really can’t do without her, you know,” he told the impassive Shivaji, wrapping his arm around Jessica’s waist to hold her still. “Half the people we mean to visit won’t admit me if I show up alone, and the other half are unlikely to disclose their secrets, if they have any, to me.”

“Arrangements have been made,” Shivaji said. “Others have been sent ahead to prepare.”

Jessica looked a question at him, which Duran pretended not to see. “Then call them back,” he said. “Surely you can cope with a simple change of plans?” If he’d not been watching closely, he’d have missed the flash in Shivaji’s eyes, the one that acknowledged the implications behind what he’d said. A network of guards that could not respond quickly and flexibly would be ineffectual if confronted with, say, an escape attempt by Duran.

Not at all sure why he was cutting his own throat, Duran followed up on his advantage. “We can’t afford to lose our key to the elite society of collectors,” he said. “And short of binding and gagging her, we cannot prevent her from leaving us. If it’s the delay that troubles you, we can travel at night until we’re back on schedule.”

Shivaji’s response was to put out a hand, and Jessica must have known what he meant because she gave him the map and the new schedule of stops that she proposed. Then she went into the posthouse, and Duran saw her speak to the owner. Arranging alternate transportation, he deduced.

It was the toss of a coin which of them—Jessica or Shivaji—was more obdurate. He climbed into the carriage, propped his feet on the opposite bench, folded his arms, and awaited developments.

“I wrote to Helena,” Jessica said brightly as she entered the coach a few minutes later. “She’ll have my letter with our new route by the day after tomorrow. And Shivaji says we will be required to sleep in the carriage tonight. The innkeeper is bringing blankets and pillows, and I smuggled a flask of cognac, but don’t ask me to remove it from where it’s stowed until after dark.”

“You are singularly pleased with yourself, princess.”

“Yes.” She leaned back against the squabs. “But sad as well. I had entirely forgot Lord Philpot’s necklace, and we may be too late delivering it because of my neglect. A promise ought to be kept, don’t you think?”

“To be sure,” he said untruthfully.
Some of them,
he was thinking.
Not all.

Not, for instance, Shivaji’s oath to the liver-spotted little nizam, the one that inscribed his own death in, what? Sixteen days? Fifteen? He’d lost track. While he had been teasing Jessica, laughing with her, making love with her, the rest of the universe had moved on without him. Now he couldn’t even remember when he was scheduled to die.