Green Eyes (17 page)

“Yes.” Anna was all too conscious of how very alone they were in the night. He was so close she could feel the heat of his body, smell his indefinable scent. As Ruby had predicted, his chest was covered with a thick mat of black hair. Above it his shoulders were broad and heavy with muscle. His upper arms bulged in clear evidence of the strength she had only been able to guess at before. His abdomen above the barely fastened breeches looked hard as a board.

In a flash Anna remembered the unspeakable things he had done to her—had it been that very afternoon?—and the wantonness of her own response. Just thinking of how he had made her feel caused her throat to go dry. Her lips parted to suck in air, her eyes traveled once more of their own volition over that mesmerizing bare chest, and it entered her mind to wonder breathlessly if he was still—how had he put it?—”caigy.”

Dear Lord forgive her,
she
was!

At the realization her heart pounded, and her breath caught in her throat. She could not, would not let him sense how subject she was to the base hungers of her own body. He would take instant advantage if he knew. Already he was watching her like a beast eyeing prey.…

“I used to have nightmares myself,” he said.

“You?” She blinked at him, so surprised that she momentarily forgot all about his disturbing state of undress.

Julian nodded. “I was a child once, you know.”

“That’s difficult to believe.” Despite her discomfort in his presence, Anna had to smile at her mental image of Julian as a little boy. “What were they about?”

“The nightmares?” He shrugged. Anna got the impression that he was being deliberately casual about something that had once bothered him a great deal. “About being in the Royal Navy, mostly.”

“
Were
you in the navy?” she asked, suddenly fascinated.

He nodded, then grinned. “Though not by choice, you may be sure.”

“Tell me about it. How old were you?”

Julian leaned a shoulder against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. “Eight when I went in. Ten when I ran away from it. In between, I was at sea for two hellish years.”

“Were you impressed?” Stories of boys stolen away from their homes and forced to serve in the Royal Navy were common in England.

Julian shook his head. “Not exactly. My loving father simply handed me over.”

Anna’s eyes widened. “Your father—you don’t mean Lord Ridley?”

“The very same. The grandmother who had raised me died, and my uncle—my mother’s brother—took me to Gordon Hall. The gypsies—my mother’s family were gypsies—had no use for me. They despised me because I had Anglo blood. And, of course, there were the emeralds. My uncle knew my father had them, so he thought to trade me for a fortune in jewels. The emeralds once belonged to my mother’s family, you see; my father originally acquired them through her. Unfortunately for my uncle, he had no notion of just how ruthless my father could be. The old man pretended to agree, accepted me, handed over the emeralds—and then the next day my uncle’s body was discovered not far from Gordon Hall. The emeralds, as we both know, somehow made their way back into the old man’s possession. As for me, his unwanted embarrassment of a son—he hadn’t known I existed until I showed up at Gordon Hall—I had nearly a week to imagine that I’d found a home. Then, without any warning, his lordship had me carted off to London where I—poor trusting child—was escorted aboard a ship. The servant who’d brought me to London disappeared. Then I discovered that I’d been bound over to serve as cabin boy on a Royal Navy vessel. There were two cabin boys when we left London. The other didn’t live through the voyage.”

He stopped then, took in Anna’s wide-eyed gaze, and grinned suddenly. “Oh, don’t look so horrified. Despite a few less-than-pleasant experiences, I survived, and very handily, too.”

“But you had nightmares,” Anna said softly.

He studied her for a moment in silence, his eyes inscrutable as they moved over her face. “Are you by any chance feeling sorry for me?” he asked, amusement lacing his voice. “That’s rather like the lamb pitying the wolf, isn’t it?”

He caught her hand and carried it to his mouth before Anna knew what he was about. As he pressed his warm lips against her knuckles, Anna suddenly, vividly, became aware of how vulnerable she was. Just out of bed, she was clad only in her thin nightgown and wrapper, while Julian was positively indecent. And his mouth on her hand was sending shivers clear down to her toes.

“Frightened, little lamb?” he asked, turning her hand over so that he could press his mouth to her palm.

For a moment longer Anna stood transfixed by the dizzying effect of his mouth. Then, recovering herself, she clenched her hand into a fist and jerked it from his hold.

He watched her mockingly, but made no further attempt to touch her.

“Good night,” she managed to say with a modicum of dignity. But when she would have moved toward her own room, his hand came out to close around her elbow, stopping her.

“Anna.…”

Even that innocuous touch unsettled her. It was all she could do not to jerk her arm away.

“What is it?” she asked breathlessly, refusing to lift her gaze higher than his black-bristled chin as she battled her shameless inner demons. Even through the layers of her wrapper and nightdress his hand seemed to burn her arm.

“In case you’re worried, I wanted to set your mind at ease: I’ve decided against selling Srinagar.”

Her gaze flew to his, her eyes widening with surprise.

“Why?” she asked.

He looked suddenly uncomfortable. The hand on her arm tightened before being removed.

“I’d not turn you and your daughter out of your home,” he said, and there was a gruff undertone to the words. “You need have no fear about that.”

“What about the emeralds?” It sounded too good to be true, and she was wary.

He grimaced. “I’ll find some other way to get them back. And when I do, I’ll leave, and you may have this benighted place to yourself.”

She was silent searching his face as she weighed his words. He looked both very handsome and overwhelmingly masculine standing over her with his head slightly bent to make his words more accessible to someone with her lack of inches. The distant light behind him cast blue-black glints in the rough disorder of his hair. His eyes gleamed at her, his skin glowed tautly bronze.

To her dismay, Anna found herself almost liking him. The sensation frightened her, and she vowed to fight it for all she was worth.

“Then I certainly hope you recover the emeralds with all speed,” she said curtly, and, turning her back on him, she walked with regal dignity along the hall to her room.

With every step she took she could feel his gaze boring into her back.

XIX

O
ver the next few weeks Srinagar was positively inundated with callers. Clearly Charles, or possibly Hillmore, had spread the word that Anna’s brother-in-law had arrived from England. Hungry for news from home, whole families came to visit. Anna entertained them, smiling falsely while she claimed Julian as a near relation, which she supposed, if the story of his birth was true, in a convoluted way he was. It was almost impossible to imagine that he could be Paul’s half-brother. From his height to his coloring to his blatant masculinity, Julian was as different from Paul as it was possible to be.

The morning after Chelsea’s nightmare, he had questioned her closely about her disposal of the emeralds. Anna had told him what she remembered of the vendor and his location, relieved that he didn’t repeat his original demand that she accompany him to identify the purchaser. Later that day Julian had left, only to return a few days later, empty-handed. The vendor had evidently pulled up stakes and moved on.

After that he and Jim were gone much of the time, traveling to various cities both separately and together in search of the emeralds. Anna got the feeling that it was not their monetary value that interested him, but she had made up her mind not to question him, indeed not to allow herself to think of him as other than a not-very-welcome house-guest.

He had revealed a little of his past to her the night of Chelsea’s nightmare, and she had found herself first pitying and then liking him. To learn more about him might soften her toward him even more, arid that could be dangerous to her peace of mind. Already she had to remind herself that he was no gentleman, but a rogue and a thief and very likely a womanizer as well. If her wayward body sometimes had other notions about him, why, she ignored its contrary urgings. She was a widow, a mother, and a lady born and bred. She would not allow herself to pant after Julian Chase!

Sometimes, when Julian was not off on what Anna secretly had come to think of as his quest, he would join her and her callers in the parlor for afternoon tea. In his absence, of course, she was obliged to answer questions concerning him, which could occasionally get tricky as there was little she actually knew about him. At least, very little she could admit to. But when he was home, the situation was, if anything, worse.

Antoinette Noack, the land-rich widow of a cinnamon nabob, was perched beside her on the sofa one afternoon about a fortnight after Julian’s appearance, taking ladylike sips of tea while she pumped her hostess for information about the new arrival. Across the room sat Helen Chasen with her eighteen-year-old daughter Eleanor. Eleanor was conversing with Charles, while Helen looked on benignly. With her nut-brown curls and wide brown eyes, Eleanor was lovely. She was also, as an only child whose father owned a vast cinnamon plantation, extremely eligible. But suitable men were rather thin on the ground in Ceylon. Like Mrs. Noack, Eleanor and her mother had hastened to Srinagar to look over Anna’s brother-in-law as soon as they heard about his arrival.

It was all Anna could do not to groan as Mrs. Noack asked yet another question about Julian.

“Your dear brother is so charming—how is it that he isn’t married? Or, oh dear, perhaps I’ve been insensitive and he’s widowed, or …”

Anna, who’d been enduring similar intrusive inquiries for almost a quarter of an hour, swallowed the sudden urge to invent for Julian a wife and five kiddies at home in England. “My brother-in-law has had too much success with females to choose one in particular with whom to spend his life, I believe. I hesitate to say it of such a near relation, but I fear he is something of a rake.” She took a sip of tea, hoping that, in her own small way, she might have thrust a spoke in Julian’s wheel. No such luck, of course. Mrs. Noack’s gray eyes positively sparkled at the thought.

“A rake? Surely not! Rather an extremely charming gentleman.”

“How kind you are to see it that way.” Anna’s response verged on dryness.

“He’s not much like your late husband, is he? Oh, forgive me if the topic causes you pain, but after all you’ve been widowed nearly a year and so surely are well on the road to recovery. Mr. Chase is some years the elder of the two, is he not? How is it that he is not Lord Ridley?”

Mrs. Noack leaned forward, greedy in her quest for information, so that the froth of lace outlining her bosom was in dire danger of being dipped in her cup of steaming tea. Her café-au-lait silk gown was far too elaborate for a mere neighborly call, but, as Anna understood perfectly well, the dress was intended as bait. And Julian was the fish it was intended to lure. Anna took a sip of her own tea, feeling mildly desperate. Her ability to prevaricate was not such that she could sustain such a conversation for long. But there was nothing for it but to answer as best she could.

“He is Paul’s half-brother, and the title descended through their father,” she parried, hoping to imply without actually saying so that Julian was a product of an earlier marriage on the part of Paul’s mother. However much she currently disliked him, it wouldn’t do to pin the label of bastard on Julian. Besides, the resulting gossip would reflect badly, not just on Julian but on herself and Chelsea as well. After all, was he not living in their house as one of the family?

“How old is Mr. Chase?”

The direct question caught Anna off guard. It came as something of a shock to her to realize that she didn’t know.

“Ah—he’s—um-you know, it’s very silly of me, but I have the most dreadful time keeping my own age straight, much less anyone else’s. Julian must be—um…”

“I’m thirty-five,” a deep voice supplied from behind her. Thankful to be rescued, Anna turned to find Julian, still in his dusty travel clothes with his hat in his hand, coming around the end of the sofa. He smiled charmingly at Mrs. Noack, who simpered and held out a hand to him.

“Mrs. Noack, this is Julian Chase. Julian, Antoinette Noack.”

Julian shook hands briefly, then acknowledged the other introductions with a word and a charming smile. Finally he turned back to Anna. “That you don’t know my age wounds me. Next you’ll be telling me that you don’t remember my birth date.”

Anna smiled sourly at this sally. “Won’t you sit down and join us?” If her voice lacked enthusiasm, it was, she told herself, because his clothes were filthy and she didn’t like him much anyway. It certainly was not because Antoinette and Eleanor were eyeing him with as much delight as two mice might a piece of cheese.

“Thank you, I will. That is, if you ladies don’t object to me in all my dirt?” A lifted eyebrow accompanied this query. Anna’s silence was overridden by enthusiastic disclaimers from the others. With a single sidelong look at Anna—he was laughing at her, she was willing to swear—he pulled a chair up beside the sofa and proceeded to charm the ladies effortlessly. Anna was not sure precisely how it came about, but soon Eleanor had claimed Anna’s own place on the sofa. Anna had only stood for a moment to offer more tea to Helen and Charles.

“Your brother-in-law will soon find himself leg-shackled if he doesn’t watch out,” Charles said jovially as Anna refilled his cup. Helen tapped him smartly on the arm.

“You gentlemen think that we females have nothing on our minds but marriage,” she reproved him as Anna refilled her cup, too, before bowing to the inevitable and taking Eleanor’s vacated seat. Then Helen turned to Anna. “Tell me, how is it that Mr. Chase is not a Traverne? I know he is Paul’s brother, but I don’t understand the precise nature of the relationship.”