The Bride Wore Pearls (29 page)

“A little,” he whined.

“For that, you’ve already been punished, love. There’s nothing more to worry about.”

“Well, I’d like to have him back,” said the boy morosely. “But mostly I just want to talk.”

Rance heard the moment’s hesitation in her voice, but there was nothing else for it. “Of course,” she said. “Come sit in bed for a moment and tell me why you can’t sleep,
hmm
? Then I’ll take you back to your own room and tuck you in.”

“All right,” he said.

Through the spill of moonlight that sliced through the cracked dressing room draperies, Rance began gingerly to dress, praying he had not left anything behind. A moment later he heard the soft creak of the bed as they settled in.

He wished, oddly, that he could have seen them together. How many times, he wondered, had he watched the boys, their fair heads bent to their mother’s dark, elegant coiffure as they leaned together over a book or a task?

How many times had he heard the three of them laugh together?—a small, tight-knit family who had nonetheless welcomed him into their midst. But the boys mightn’t be so quick to welcome him into their mother’s bed.

Rance tried not to think of
that
.

“So what’s the trouble, sweet?” he heard Anisha murmur. “Have you and Tommy quarreled again?”

There was a long silence. “No, but I think I just need bigger boys to play with, Mamma,” Teddy finally said. “I think perhaps that’s why I’m always getting into trouble.”

“Oh?” she said evenly. “That’s it, is it?”

“Well, Tom can’t bat, and his legs are too short,” said the boy as if that somehow explained it. “And Chatterjee is always busy with Uncle Luc now. So I have been thinking I want to go away to school. To Eton. Frankie Fitzwater says it’s the only place for a boy of consequence.”

“
Hmm,
” said Anisha. “I am not sure that’s much of a recommendation, Teddy. Perhaps Eton was the only school willing to take Frankie Fitzwater? Did you ever think of that?”

The boy seemed to consider it. “Could be,” he finally said. “Mr. Fitzwater
is
a little silly. But I want to go
somewhere
. All that droning on in the schoolroom puts me to sleep, and at Eton, there would be cricket. Wouldn’t there?”

“Oh, yes, I daresay,” Anisha softly answered. “Cricket, and other games, too.”

In the heavy silence that followed, Rance froze, fearful of being heard.

Had he been able to speak, he would have told the lad that the bullies of Eton were nothing to the annoyances of a younger brother, and that his new instructors would be just as dull, but far better armed—with long hickory rods that, when switched briskly across one’s palm, stung enough to keep the dead sitting up straight.

“But you know, Teddy,” Anisha finally resumed, her voice withering, “those places—those English schools—they seem so cruel to me. And they always struck me as—well, as places for boys whose mothers will not miss them . . .”

He heard the bed creak again. “And would you miss me, Mamma?” he wheedled, clearly wanting it both ways.

“Oh, Teddy!” Her voice muffled, as if she’d pulled him against her. “Teddy, you are my baby. Oh, yes, I should miss you so terribly!”

“But Mamma, you would still have Tom,” he pointed out. “
He’s
the baby. Besides, going to Eton is what proper English boys do. And isn’t that why we came here? So that I could learn to be a proper English boy?”

“Yes, of course it is,” she said, but Rance could hear the anguish in her voice. “Still, many English boys do have tutors, you know. And Tommy—well, then he will wish to go away, too, will he not? And right on your heels, I daresay.”

“Probably,” said Teddy glumly. “But that’s all right, Mamma. I’ll look after him. And you—well, you could just have some more babies. I mean—
couldn’t
you? Then you’d not miss us at all.”

For an instant, Rance couldn’t breathe, his fingers stilling on his waistcoat buttons. The boy’s words, flung so casually out, hung in the cool night air. And suddenly, it was as if Rance’s whole life hung there, too—suspended by the thread of an awful question.

“Oh, Teddy, I should love that more than anything on earth!” said Anisha on a breathless rush. “Of
course
I want more babies. But one cannot simply—”

She halted, as if realizing what she’d just said.

“But what?” Teddy demanded.

Again, the long, awful pause.

Forcing himself to move, Rance shrugged into his coat, imagining Anisha’s expression as she formed the words. As she walked back through her logic and realized the inevitable.

“It doesn’t matter, Teddy,” she finally managed, “because more children could never replace you and Tom. The two of you are irreplaceable. Whatever gave you such a mad notion?”

“Janet,” he replied calmly. “And it isn’t mad. She says it all the time. Just yesterday she said it.”

“Yesterday?”

“When she was pressing out your dinner gown,” the boy explained. “She said to Chatterjee that it was high time you had more babies, before it was too late.”

“I beg your pardon?” returned Anisha sharply.

“I’m just saying what she
said,
” Teddy reported. “That you were going to keep pining after what you couldn’t have ’til everything you did have shriveled up and died. Whatever that means.”

“
Oh—
” Anisha murmured. “Oh, dear God.”

“You really ought not wait, Mamma, until it is too late,” Teddy sagely advised. “It just sounded bad. What Janet said, I mean, about shriveling.”

But the tenuous thread had snapped, dropping a chilling pall over Rance. It furled down and around him like a cold, dead thing, then drew deep into his chest to lay like a weight against his heart. Somehow he finished buttoning his waistcoat and felt, to his horror, the hot press of tears stinging at the backs of his eyes.

Never had he dreamt a small boy could blurt out a more innocent—or accurate—truth.

“Teddy,” Anisha finally said, plainly changing the subject, “you really oughtn’t have been belowstairs at all. What were you doing?”

“Shooting marbles down the passageway,” he said, as if it had been obvious. “There’s a big hump in the flagstone where it goes over the kitchen drain, and it makes ’em leap and jump all around.”

Ever so silently, Rance turned and eased the door shut.

Already he felt like an interloper here. And Teddy—good God, could small children and servants see what Anisha could not? That life was moving on and passing her by. That she was waiting on something that was never going to happen. Waiting on
someone—
someone who had bollixed up his life so badly he was not worth waiting on.

Was that what Anisha had been doing for the last year? Waiting on him to get his mess of a life straightened out? With a deep sense of shame for what he’d just done—clouding the pristine waters of their friendship, painting false hope, risking pregnancy—he tossed his cravat round his neck in disgust.

Anisha did not want an
affaire
. She wanted
a life.
And she deserved it.

He could tell by the soft rumble of voices that mother and son had descended into argument—a lecture, most likely, on the dangers of shooting marbles where servants had to tread. The sweetness of the night now gone, Rance paced to the window and quietly pushed wide the draperies. Already he could see a hint of dawn limning the rooftops of Mayfair.

Later, he told himself that the approaching sunrise had been the urgency that had driven him as he’d quietly pushed up the sash and thrown one leg out the window. That, perhaps, and the pure masculine challenge of scaling down a drainpipe in the dark.

But even as his feet touched the gravel below and he strode out through Ruthveyn’s rear gardens with his cravat hanging loose round his neck, he was never sure.

It was likely just pure cowardice.

That, and the awful dread of facing the truth he feared he might see in Anisha’s eyes.

Chapter 9

So true a fool is
love
that in your will,

Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 57

D
isappointments, the great William Penn had once written, are not always to be measured by the loss of the thing but by the overvaluation put upon it. Lady Anisha Stafford had believed herself inured to disappointment, having suffered more than a few. She had learned from an early age to temper her expectations, to value fairly what she had, and to cherish it while she had it, even as she remained ever mindful that joy, unlike disappointment, was often fleeting.

But Mr. Penn, Anisha darkly considered, had wed a sprightly chit of less than half his fifty-odd years who had proceeded to bear him eight children about as fast as other women tatted cushions. It did not seem to Anisha as if he had suffered too many disappointments in
that
regard.

On a sudden surge of bitterness, she tried to snap open her letter for the umpteenth time, but the paper had by now gone limp.

Behind her, Janet made a
tch-tch
ing sound. “Chin up, ma’am.” Her voice was sharp, as if she spoke to a child. “I’ve got to get this mess of hair put up before the carriage comes round, or you’ll be late.”

Anisha jerked her eyes up from the letter. “I’m sorry?”

In the mirror, Janet held her gaze steadily, one of the hair combs poised high. “Lady Anisha,” she said in mild exasperation. “You can keep readin’ that thing ’till the chickens roost, and you know not a blessed word of it’ll change.”

Anisha’s lips thinned. “I do hope, Janet, that you have not been reading my post.”

Janet stabbed in the comb. “No need, ma’am,” she said. “That’s laid on your dressing table four days now, and I know Lazonby’s hand, for it looks like wild monkeys trained him penmanship. And as to what’s in it—” Here, she paused to twist one rope of hair elaborately around another, then softened her voice. “As to what’s in it, my lady, well, I can guess as much, I daresay, from the look in your eyes.”

Anisha folded the letter, drew it smooth between her fingers, then gently laid it down. “That obvious, am I?”

“Well, I have known you, my lady, since coming out to India twenty-some years ago,” said the maid, calmly drawing up the rest of Anisha’s hair a long, even brushstroke. “Serene as pond water, you were, even as a wee girl.”

“Was I?” Absently, Anisha fiddled with Janet’s dish of hairpins. “I can’t recall.”

“Oh, I’ll never forget.” Janet began deftly twisting the length of Anisha’s hair into an elegant coronet. “What a proper little Indian lady you looked in your bright silks, with that skinny spine straight as a stick and your manner so calm. Like an exotic duchess, you were. Even Captain Stafford, God rest him, and those two hellions upstairs couldn’t throw you out. But Lazonby? Now
he
agitates you, ma’am, and always has. ’Tis a bad sign, that, when a man can knock a steadfast female all a’kilter.”

Anisha made a pretense of poking about in the dish, biting hard at her lip so as not to cry. “Do not feel sorry for me, Janet,” she warned when the urge had passed.

“Oh, Lord, I don’t!” said the maid around the hairpins she’d just tucked between her lips. “You’re a rich, beautiful widow with a family that loves you—even if they do take advantage of your good heart. And if Lazonby don’t want you, ma’am, someone will.”

“Janet, really—!”

But Janet ignored her disapprobation. “No, my lady, ’tis Lazonby I feel for, and no mistake,” she continued. “Never saw a handsomer, more twisted-up sort of fellow. Oh, bless me—!” Stabbing a pin into place, Janet rammed a hand into her pocket and began rummaging. “Speaking of letters, Higgenthorpe gave me this. Then Tom chased that squirrel in through the conservatory, and Silk and Satin set off after it and I reckon my mind went skittering after ’em.”

“The morning post?” Anisha caught Janet’s gaze in the mirror as another letter was passed over her shoulder.

“No, that Mrs. Rutledge’s footman brought it,” said Janet. “T’will be good news, I pray.”

Anisha prayed so, too.

She had confided Luc’s indiscretion to Janet. Despite Anisha’s halfhearted accusation about Rance’s letter, she knew Janet was trustworthy to a fault. And Anisha had needed a second set of ears to guard against servants’ gossip—of which there had been none, thank God.

Swiftly, she opened the letter and let her eyes sweep down it before placing it facedown on her dressing table, relief washing through her.

It was precisely what Frederica Rutledge had led Anisha to expect: a polite but carefully veiled refusal of Luc’s offer, saying that the family feared he was too young and Lucy too headstrong to make a happy marriage, and expressing the Rutledges’ warmest wish of seeing them both today.

It seemed Mrs. Rutledge had indeed been able to somehow smooth the matter over with her husband. Lucan had been saved, through no effort of his own, from an early marriage.

And Miss Rutledge had been saved from Lucan.

Despite her own personal despair, Anisha was grateful. “It is good news, Janet,” she said quietly. “Lord Lucan has escaped the parson’s grasp. He has been lucky indeed.”

“Aye, and learnt a lesson, ’tis to be hoped,” said Janet darkly. Suddenly, her expression brightened. “Oh! Speaking of lucky, my lady . . .”

“Yes?”

“I was just wondering.” Janet colored a little as Anisha watched her in the mirror. “Might I trouble you again? About my stars and such?”

“
Jyotish
?” Anisha hardened her stare. “Janet, what are you up to?”

“The Plate, ma’am. ’Tis this Thursday.” At Anisha’s blank stare, she added, “At Epsom? The horse race?”

“Oh, Janet, for heaven’s sake.” Anisha looked at her askance. “You know I do not care for gambling.”

But when Janet’s face fell, Anisha relented and spun half around on her dressing stool. “Oh, very well,” she said impatiently. “Just give me your hand.”

With a soft smile, Janet presented it.

Anisha took it and spread her fingers wide, lightly tracing the lines as she struggled to remember the maid’s particulars. “Such fine, long hands,” she murmured, tracing Janet’s heart line. “You are
Mithuna
ascendant, and so ruled by Mercury. Tell me about this race.”

“Well, it’s just the Grand Stand Plate, ma’am.” At Anisha’s blank look, she went on. “ ’Tis run every year. My brother—the one who buttles for Lord Sherrell—says his lordship’s to go, and he’ll place one bet for the both of us. We’ve only to agree upon the horse.”

“And who shall you choose?” Anisha asked, her attention fixed upon the palm.

“Jim—my brother—he says Idle Boy or Gardenia. But I thought perhaps Lord Chesterfield’s Sampson, seeing as you once told me S was lucky for me.”

“Usually, yes.” Still Anisha did not look up at her. “But no, none of those. And remember, Janet, the stars are never static, just as our lives never are. We are all of us—always—in a state of constant and fluid change.”

“Well . . .” said Janet pensively, “I wouldn’t know about fluids. But there’s always Lord Exeter’s horse—or one o’ them.”

“What is the horse’s name?” Anisha gently folded Janet’s fingers in.

“Hmm, let me think which was the S one—oh, yes! ’Tis Swordplayer.”

“Ah.” Anisha gave Janet’s fist a squeeze, and let it go. “Well. Have you the ruby chip pendant I gave you?”

“Yes, ma’am. In my room. But you told me not to wear it all the time.”

“Indeed, but you must put it on now,” said Anisha, “and wear it the rest of the week. Then tell Jim to place his bet on Swordplayer.”

“Really, ma’am?” Janet sounded in alt. “And will we win, then?”

Anisha’s smile was crooked. “Well, I believe life will fall into good order for you in the coming days,” she said. “That is all I can tell you. Now, you must on no account let on to Luc we had this discussion, for he’ll want me to—”

Just then, a knock sounded, and Luc himself dashed in, pinching a pair of waistcoats by their collars. Chatterjee stood behind him, his eyes catching Anisha’s in a speaking glance.

Luc, it seemed, was being a problem this morning.

“Which, Nish?” he said a little nervously. “I can’t decide. I don’t know why.”

Anisha turned her head so that Janet might insert the last comb. “You don’t know why you can’t decide?”

“Yes, precisely,” said the young man, one guinea-gold curl bouncing down the center of his forehead. “Almost precisely. I mean, I can’t decide whether to look dashing. Or dandyish. Or solemn. Or what.” Here he thrust the waistcoats forward in turn. “Gold makes my eyes more vivid, but the charcoal looks more sedate. Sedate might be good, I daresay?”

“And you wish to please the Rutledges?” Anisha murmured. “You might have thought of that three days ago, and worried less about your waistcoats.”

“Well, it’s too late now, isn’t it?” he said, the old bitterness edging back into his voice. “Good God, do you mean to flog me over this forever, Nish?”

But the young man, Anisha realized, had no conception of what
forever
felt like.

Forever felt like a life lived waiting on your father’s approval. A decade spent in a near-loveless marriage. A year wasted in wait of a kiss—or just a mere sidelong look of hopeless yearning.

Forever felt like her life.

Anisha felt the well of tears rush in again and was compelled to fight it down.

Something in her gaze must have softened Luc’s tone. “Nish, I’m sorry,” he said pleadingly, “for I know I’ve bollixed things up. But now I wish merely to make a good impression on Mr. Rutledge. Frankie Fitzwater said Rutledge was a sporting chap in his day, but not much of a blade—at least, not fashionwise . . .”

Anisha waved toward the charcoal. “Well, if he decides to run you through,” she managed, “it will be easier for Chatterjee to get the bloodstains out of that one.”

Luc groaned and flung himself onto her bed, sending Silk and Satin scattering. “Nish, good God!”

“Give me those,” Chatterjee chided, nearly tripping over the cats to seize the garments. “Didn’t I just press them? One cannot wallow about on good fabric like a pig.”

Anisha turned around on her dressing stool and regarded the both of them steadily. “Chatterjee, we will find Lucan a new valet soon, I promise,” she said. “One who will stay put this time.”

“Oh, yes, yes,” Chatterjee sang as he vanished, “and cows will leap over the moon!”

“As to you, Luc, you may relax,” she dryly added, presenting the letter between two fingers. “Your suit of Lucy Rutledge has been politely refused.”

Luc sat abruptly upright from the bed, blinking. “
Refused?
”

Anisha twitched the letter by way of proof.

But a red flush was creeping over Luc’s face. “What, am I not good enough now?” he said, leaping up to snatch it. “What the devil does she want, then? A duke?”

“I cannot say,” Anisha murmured. “Perhaps she does not want a husband at all. Is that so inconceivable?”

“Or perhaps she just doesn’t want
me,
” said Luc indignantly.

Janet set the lid on the hairpins with a clatter. “No pleasing some folk,” she muttered.

“Apparently not,” said Anisha. “And the fact is, Lucan, Lucy Rutledge is too young to know what she wants. As are you.”

“
Apparently,
” said Lucan a little bitterly, “age hasn’t anything to do with it. Bessett seems to have had a devil of a time deciding what he wanted, and the man is all of thirty.”

“Lucan, that is quite enough,” she said warningly.

But the lad wasn’t finished. “And you, Nish, do you know what you want?” he demanded. “And if you do, why aren’t you fighting for it? Perhaps, had you done a little kissing and groping in the dark, you’d not be where you are now.”

“
Oh?
” Anisha rose in a rustle of champagne-gold satin, her voice cold. “And where, precisely, am I, Lucan?”

“On your way to lifelong widowhood,” he said sarcastically. “And to a wedding that could have been yours instead of Miss de Rohan’s had you played your cards with a modicum of bravado.”

Anisha felt herself trembling inside with a rage that was not entirely directed at her brother. “You, Lucan, do not know a bloody thing about me or what I want,” she retorted, resisting the urge to slap him. “You know nothing of the life I’ve lived. Nothing of what it means to be a wife or mother or even a widow, come to that. You are just a cocksure little fool who hasn’t the good sense to know the hell he just escaped. And now you dare to question the Rutledges’ judgment? Or mine? Well, be damned to you.”

Luc froze, his face instantly stricken.

They were likely the first curse words to pass Anisha’s lips—certainly the first aimed at her brother. But now that she had spoken them, Anisha felt a little more free. A little more empowered. And very, very angry—at Luc. And at Rance.