The Passion of the Purple Plumeria (27 page)

Gwen looked up sideways at her husband-to-be. It was rather nice to know that she would always have someone at her back. If felt more than nice having him there. It felt right.

How very odd.

William squeezed her waist, as though he understood, and dropped a kiss on the side of her head.

“Before we break out the bubbly,” said Miles, “there’s just one thing.”

Gwen looked at him so fiercely that Miles backed away, keeping a weather eye out for her parasol, which had been known to connect with his shins before.

“I wish you very happy and all that,” Miles said hastily. “But you’re all forgetting something. If those weren’t the real jewels that the Gardener made off with, then where are they?”

The magic mirror lay where it had fallen, tarnished but unbroken. When Sir Magnifico lifted it, he saw not the Tower behind him, but their faces, his and Plumeria’s, hallowed in sunlight. And from the trees, a million birds caroled, “Joy!” The bright blue sky was all the canopy they needed and the fruit on the vine their wedding feast.

—From
The Convent of Orsino
by A Lady

“D
on’t look at me!” said Lizzy quickly.

“But if you didn’t have the jewels, why would the Gardener be following you?” said Lady Henrietta logically.

“It would be enough that he thought she had the jewels,” said Gwen, coming to Lizzy’s defense.

William remembered something that had been said, a hundred years back, on the day he had arrived at Miss Climpson’s academy, a day that would be forever blazoned on his memory as the worst of all possible days at the time, and the luckiest in retrospect. He’d had the fright of his life, but he’d met his Gwen.

“Didn’t your schoolmistress say you’d been sent a gift from your brother?”

“Well, yes,” said Lizzy, taken aback, “but it was all bazaar stuff, brass bangles, clay beads, that sort of thing. Like this.”

She drew a necklace from her pocket, a heavy, unlovely thing of irregularly shaped, garishly painted clay beads.

“You used to like to play with those when you were little,” said William fondly. “Mostly, you liked to try to eat them.”

Lizzy was less than thrilled by this tender reminiscence. “Jack calls me his magpie, because I like bright things,” she said. “That was why he sent them.”

“May I?” asked Gwen, holding out her hand.

Unsuspecting, Lizzy handed the beads over. “They’re nothing terribly special,” she said modestly. “Just— Stop that!”

Gwen took the beads and whapped them, with great force, into the wall. Flecks of paint and bits of broken clay filtered down the previously pristine wallpaper.

Lizzy’s “I liked those!” warred with Lord Richard’s “Not the new wallpaper!” and Amy’s, “Oooh, let me have a go!”

Gwen evaded them all, holding the necklace up high. “There,” she said triumphantly. “Look at that.”

“We’re going to have to repaper that wall,” said Lord Richard grimly, fingering a hole in the paper.

“Stop whinging and pay attention. Not that. This.” Gwen gave the string a good shake, sending bits of clay flaking down.

In the light from the window, there was a sullen reddish gleam. William leaned closer, squinting. Gwen took the piece between her fingers, flicked some more of the clay away, and held the strand forward for inspection.

William cleared his throat. “Is that—”

“Rubies,” said Gwen. “He had them dipped in clay.”

Lizzy’s eyes were like saucers. Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.

William was rather pleased that Gwen had been able to render his daughter speechless. That boded well for their future relationship. He felt a warm and fuzzy feeling as he looked at his two womenfolk. All that was needed was to bring Kat home and the picture would be complete.

Not that the rubies weren’t very nice and all, but the ebony and silver of Gwen’s hair and the bronze of Lizzy’s were all the treasure William needed.

“Here you are.” Gwen handed the string of beads back to Lizzy as nonchalantly as though they had been nothing but clay. “I believe these are yours.”

Lizzy made a valiant effort at human speech. “You mean—all this time—”

“You’ve been carrying around a rajah’s ransom in rubies,” said William grimly. “And what Jack was thinking, I don’t know.”

“I have a good guess,” said Lord Richard. “He was probably thinking he was safer without those on his person.”

“He wouldn’t have done it on purpose!” said Lizzy quickly. “Not that way. He must have assumed as long as I didn’t know, no one else would guess either. And I wouldn’t have guessed,” she added, looking at Gwen with a combination of respect and annoyance, “if you hadn’t thought to bash them into that wall.”

“Thank you,” said Gwen regally.

“The wallpaper,” said Lord Richard.

“I never liked it anyway,” said Amy blithely. She turned back to the others. “But what about the rest of it? Not that the rubies aren’t lovely, but one strand doesn’t make a rajah’s hoard.”

“Unless he was a very small rajah,” contributed Miles. “Metaphorically,” he added quickly. “I didn’t mean that he was a midget.”

William broke in before anyone could pursue that interesting side angle. “Was there more that Jack sent?” he asked gently. “Or did you leave it behind at the school?”

Agnes and Lizzy exchanged a long look.

“There is more,” said Agnes hesitantly. “We bundled it all into our packs, in case we needed to trade something shiny for coin along the way.”

A collective groan arose from the others.

“I suppose,” said Agnes tentatively, “that it was a good thing I still had something left of my allowance?”

Miles shook his head, one lock of blond hair flopping over his brow. “Can’t you just picture it? A rajah’s treasure spread out between the carters and innkeepers of Hampshire and Sussex.”

“And Wiltshire,” pointed out Lizzy. She met her father’s eye and said, “Er, we’ll just get the rest of it now, shall we? Come along, Agnes.”

Agnes followed dutifully.

“I’ll go with them,” volunteered Amy, who followed along after.

The rest of the group dispersed throughout the long salon. William joined Gwen at one of the windows, placing a hand familiarly on the small of her back.

“I,” he said, in an undertone intended for her ears only, “am going to throttle Jack when I find him.”

“It sounds like you’ll have to get in line,” said Gwen, leaning back into his hand. She raised her brows at him. “You have to admit, it was clever of the boy.”

Pride warred with irritation. “Oh, he’s clever all right. I just wish he would show a bit more—”

“Common sense?”

“Concern for those around him.” The idea of Lizzy blithely trotting around the English countryside with a sack full of jewels made his blood run cold. What had the boy been thinking, sending them to her in the first place?

“Well,” said Gwen practically. “He’s certainly done his best for his little sister. A place in an elite academy and a dowry anyone would envy.”

“A dowry that made her the target of the governments of two countries,” countered William, a worried line between his brows. It felt good to have someone to confide in, someone to share his worries with. He’d missed this. “Jack had to know that someone would be after those jewels.”

Gwen put her head to one side. “On the other hand,” she said judiciously, “he did a decent job of disguising the jewels. Your daughter herself didn’t realize she had them. And he did go to the trouble of setting a false trail with those other parcels.”

“Yes,” said William wryly. “By sending them straight to Kat.”

“Your Kat,” said Gwen firmly, “can handle herself against just about anything. I’d back her against those buffoons the Gardener had following us any day. And I’d imagine your Jack knows it. If he has the sense that God gave a duck.”

William looked at her, at her elegant, strong-boned face, at the formidable poise that hid such a warm heart beneath. “You’ve a good heart, Gwen Meadows,” he said, “to advocate so for a boy you’ve not met yet.”

“I’m simply speaking sense,” said Gwen, with dignity.

William grinned at her. “It’s no use. I’ve sussed out your secret. You make yourself out to be so severe, but at heart, you’re as soft as I am.”

“I wouldn’t say soft—” Gwen looked so appalled that William felt it incumbent upon himself to kiss her again.

“Ahem!” Lizzy cleared her throat and then cleared it again. Entering the room, she dumped a clumsily wrapped cloth parcel on a rosewood card table. “I have the rest of the baubles Jack sent me. If anyone is still interested,” she added pointedly.

“
Twenty
sword parasols,” said her father.

“Don’t be silly,” said Lizzy. “Ten will do quite nicely. And a little pistol?”

“Not after seeing your aim with those arrows,” said William.

“I’ll practice with you,” offered Gwen, and it was all William could do not to kiss her again, right there. “Every woman should know how to use a pistol.”

“And a sword parasol,” William said fondly.

Lizzy rolled her eyes at Agnes and set about fanning out her loot on the table. Presented as it was, it was an unimpressive sight, the term “bazaar baubles,” if anything, doing the cheap trinkets too much honor. There were more of the heavy clay beads, clumsy brass bangles, and garish earrings of colored glass. There was a mirror too, gaudily adorned with all manner of bulbous brass work and chunks of rough colored stones.

Lizzy shook out one last earring. “That’s the last of it,” she said cheerfully.

Miles Dorrington cleared his throat. “It looks like your brother robbed a very unsuccessful jeweler.”

Lady Henrietta rolled up her sleeves. “Shall we?”

“Not against the wallpaper!” said Lord Richard quickly.

Within an hour, the unprepossessing collection of bazaar trash was presenting quite a different aspect. As was the wallpaper, but only in a few spots, when Lord Richard wasn’t looking. The clay beads all had gems hidden in their centers: sapphire and emerald, ruby and topaz. The brass bangles, which tinkled so discordantly when shaken, carried a loose cargo of diamonds. The earrings Lizzy had confidently dismissed as colored glass were, in fact, rare yellow sapphires. As for the mirror, the elevated brass work hid the cream of the collection, loose gems too large to conceal in a clay bead, while the stones, once polished, revealed themselves as chunks of lapis lazuli and tourmaline.

They all sat, exhausted, on the settees around the table with its glittering, illicit hoard.

“Good Lord,” said William. “The boy’s gone and robbed Golconda.”

“Not Golconda,” said Gwen, busily sorting gemstones into piles, like with like. “The Rajah of Berar.” She looked up. “There’s something missing.”

Lady Henrietta surveyed the haul on the table. “Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds . . .”

“The Moon of Berar.”

“I’d thought that was a myth,” said William.

Gwen looked up at him. “Bonaparte doesn’t think so. That’s why the Gardener was so hot to get his hands on these—and on your son.”

Miles raised a hand. “What’s the Moon of Berar?”

Gwen answered. “It’s a mythical jewel that supposedly has some sort of supernatural powers.”

“No one can quite agree on what they are,” said William, picking up the tale. “Some say it provides the power of omniscience, others that it has the ability to provide one’s heart’s desire. In many versions . . .”

His voice trailed off.

“Yes?” prompted Gwen.

William reached out and picked up the mangled brass mirror. It was a sad-looking thing, with all the baubles picked off, the stones pried from their settings. Denuded of its borrowed finery, it was a trumpery piece, made of cheap brass and cheaper glass. Or not even glass. The reflected surface was wavy and dim.

“In some versions,” he said, “the Moon is said to be a mirror.”

“Not that mirror, surely,” said Miles Dorrington. “It looks like someone put it together by having an elephant stomp on a piece of brass and then called it done.”

“Sometimes,” said William quietly, looking at Gwen, “valuable treasures hide under forbidding exteriors.”

Gwen slid her hand into his. “Sometimes,” she said, “it just takes a clever man to see it.”

William twined his fingers through hers, thanking the Fates that had thrown them together that day at Miss Climpson’s. “Not clever, but lucky. Very, very lucky.”

“I suppose,” said Miles, looking dubiously at the mirror. “I wouldn’t want to overestimate my quotient of wisdom, but that still just looks like a mirror to me.”

According to the legend, or at least one of the legends, the mirror displayed one’s ultimate desire. Looking down into the mirror, William saw both their faces reflected, his and Gwen’s. Lizzy, who had come up behind for a closer look, was just visible behind them, all nose and eyes in the mirror’s slightly distorted surface.

William felt a welling of joy overtake him, a springtime of the soul that was everything anyone had ever promised him in an English spring. There was all the world before them, a lifetime of wonder and joy still to come.

“I don’t know,” William said mildly, setting the mirror back down on the table. “I think it got it just about right.”

And he knew, from Gwen’s quick sideways look, that she knew exactly what he meant.

“Yes,” said Lady Henrietta practically, “but what are we to do with it?”

“I could just go put it back in my room . . . ,” suggested Lizzy, making for the glittering pile.

“I believe it counts as a spoil of war,” said Miles Dorrington. “Like a prize ship.”

“In which case,” said Lord Richard, turning to William, “it belongs to your son.”

“Who gave it to me,” said Lizzy quickly.

“I helped carry it!” put in Agnes.

“We’ll keep it for Jack,” said William, although even as he said it, he wondered how long, if ever, it would be until he saw his second son again.

“Surely just one little necklace . . . ,” wheedled Lizzy. “It was my Christmas package, after all.”

Gwen lightly squeezed William’s hand, and he looked up to find her watching him. She gave a little nod. “He’ll be back,” she said. “If only to make more trouble.”

“We’re good at that, we Reids,” said William ruefully.

Gwen rose from her seat and held out a hand to him. “Then it’s a good thing, isn’t it,” she said, “that I’m so good at rescuing you?”