The Bride Wore Pearls (38 page)

With a sound of frustration, Anisha scooted off, landing on her feet.

He looked down at her through teasing eyes. “And
that,
old thing, is a taste of your own medicine,” he said.

“
Mine—
?” She looked at him incredulously.

His smile was rueful. “Aye, you can torment me by simply strolling into a room.”

In the graying light, her cheeks flushed. “You hide it rather well.”

“As a gentleman should.” His trousers still bagging loose, Rance turned to draw out the shutters.

“A gentleman might finish what he started,” she said tartly.

He flattened the shutters against the glass and latched them shut, deepening the gloom. “Aye, well, just sit down and eat something,” he said, turning back to her. “There will be time enough later to ruin your life.”

She sighed, then surprised him by kneeling down. “Then give me your boot,” she said. “They are sodden.”

“I can get them off myself,” he said, “I think.”

“Give me the dashed boot,” she said, snapping her fingers. “There, are you pleased? You’ve reduced me to bad language. Still, I don’t fancy being bedded by a lout in wet boots.”

“But an ordinary lout in his dry altogether will do?”

She cut him a wry glance. “We shall see,” she answered. “I’ll put him through his paces and see if he can please me.”

“
Witch,
” he said, yanking her up from the floor and kissing her again, this time with no hint of restraint. And when he’d finished, there was no laughter in Anisha; just a look of dazed desire in her eyes and a slight tremble in her knees.

“Now go sit down near the fire,” he said more gently, turning her in his arms to face the table. “Fill our plates and pour the wine. I’ll see to the boots.”

Casting a dark glance over her shoulder as she went, Anisha did as he ordered, going to the little table and uncovering the dishes. Rance managed to drag off his wet boots and set them by the hearth. His waistcoat followed, and then his trousers and stockings, which he hung from a pair of hooks that had been hammered into the thick wooden mantel, likely for just such a purpose.

Down to his shirt and drawers, he sat opposite her on the settle.

“So my lout is going to dine in his smallclothes,” Anisha teased, sliding a thick slice of bread onto his plate. “Hmm.”

“I’m afraid Horsham hadn’t Janet’s foresight,” he said, taking up his glass in mock salute. “Or perhaps he harbored a secret hope I’d take pneumonia and die quietly in some roadside ditch.”

“Alas, here’s to poor Horsham.” Anisha touched the brim of her glass to his with a sharp, ringing sound. “For he’s about to find himself sadly disillusioned. If your years in the French Foreign Legion and being twice tossed in prison didn’t kill you, I rather doubt the Essex damp will do it.”

He laughed and began to eat, quietly watching her.

As usual, Anisha picked at her food. The hour being early, a proper dinner was not ready, but they managed well enough with the warm chicken and a surprisingly good wine. The aftereffects of his absinthe having passed, Rance was hungry enough—and still soldier enough—that it scarcely mattered, but throughout their near-silent meal, he wondered if he should order something special for her.

“All jests about poor Horsham aside, however,” she finally said, severing his musings, “you do give the impression of being invincible.”

He finished chewing. “Invincible, eh?”

She propped her chin on her hands and studied him. “Not that I don’t worry for you, mind,” she mused. “I do, Rance, all the time. But out of all of them, it is you who has always seemed so solid and indestructible.”

“Ah, Nish,” he said. “No one is.”

But she was speaking, he knew, of the
Fraternitas
—primarily of Geoff and her elder brother. They had been nearly inseparable, the three of them, for a great many years now.

And yet Anisha very nearly had separated him from Geoff, for they’d all but come to blows. She likely
would
separate him from Ruthveyn, before all was said and done, though none of it was her doing. Still, her brother would likely return from India knowing the truth; that his best friend had gone back on what was practically a blood oath. He would have tolerated the union, perhaps, had Rance’s name been cleared—but it had not.

Geoff, at least, was happy now.

Rance set his glass down. “I goaded him, you know,” he said, staring hard at the scarred tabletop. “Like some green stripling, I just . . .
pushed
him.”

Anisha looked up from a forkful of peas. “I beg your pardon?”

“Geoff.” He looked up but found himself unable to hold her gaze. “That night in the temple—the night we were supposed to initiate Miss de Rohan—I goaded him into courting you. He said if I didn’t have the guts to do it, he did. Does that sound . . .
invincible
? Because I
was
gutless. I told him—” He hesitated.

“What?” she softly urged.

He shook his head. “I told him, Nish, you were like a sister to me,” he said after a moment had passed. “And that’s not true. It never has been. I just thought . . . I thought, Nish, that Geoff would look after you and the boys as you deserve. That he would be more of a gentleman than I could ever be, and that Ruthveyn would be happy. But you didn’t deserve to be saddled with Geoff. Because you were right. He hadn’t any passion for you.”

She stared at him across the table for a time. “And do you, Rance?” she finally asked. “Do
you
have a passion for me?”

“Oh, aye,” he whispered, his voice oddly breaking.

Passion a thousand times over.

The sort of passion, he was increasingly certain, that never died.

But he made no move toward her, nor did she seem to expect it. Only the storm raging beyond the windows broke the silence.

“Well,” she finally said, “I have a feeling we shall come to a point on that one soon enough.”

“Aye?” Grimly, he studied her. “How so?”

Anisha picked up her glass and swirled her wine about in the bowl. “I feel as if Mr. Kemble has pointed us to water after a long walk in the desert,” she finally answered, her voice pensive. “You won’t believe me, of course, but I see a sort of—oh, call it
closure—
drawing near.”

“Closure?”

Her gaze had turned inward. “Your stars,” she said. “A great change is coming. And with it no small amount of danger.”

“Anisha,” he said warningly.

She shrugged and set her glass down. “Now is a time of grave risk and great opportunity,” she said more certainly. “
Jyotish
shows us the path, Rance, and in this, the stars are clear. You must not move with your usual haste. Promise me—” Here, her voice caught, belying her calm. “
Promise me,
Rance, that you will set every foot with care along this path. That you will not let your temper or your impatience get the better of you as you finish these things Mr. Kemble has set in motion.”

He could sense her disquiet. “Anisha, love,” he said, holding out his arms. “Come here.”

She rose and circled the old table. Rance turned sideways on the settle, leaning back against what passed for an arm. Anisha sat down, and against his better judgment, he pulled her to his chest.

“I promise,” he said, planting a kiss atop her head, “that I will set every foot with care.”

She settled her head on his shoulder. “Thank you,” she said softly.

He pressed his lips to her hair again and laid his hand over her heart, as he had done the night they’d made love. Holding her felt so disconcertingly right; it brought him a kind of quiet joy that tugged at him in a way he couldn’t quite put words to. And it was that yearning—that half seeking a pure and perfect whole—which had drawn him, solitary and stoic, into her orbit, beginning with the day he’d burst into that tiny cabin to flirt and to tease and to carry her home to her brother.

But that had been before he’d fully comprehended the risk. Before the realization had come to him, sharp as a newly forged blade: There were some women with whom a man dared not flirt.

Or in his case,
one
woman.

He drew a deep breath and let it out again. “Tell me, Anisha,” he said quietly, “about . . . that thing—that Hindu notion you and Ruthveyn sometimes argue about.
Karma,
is it?”

She lifted her head and looked up at him for an instant, as if to see if he was serious. Thunder rumbled again in the distance, and rain suddenly clattered across the windows like a fistful of birdshot. Disdaining the temptation her bare legs might present, Anisha sat up, absently crossing and tucking them beneath her.

“
Karma
is a common enough concept,” she finally answered. “You would find similarities to the passage in Galatians which says—”

“Aye, ‘
Be not deceived, for God is not mocked
’?” he quoted. “I remember you flinging that at your brother once in the heat of some argument.”

“Yes, for it goes on to explain that, ‘
For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,
’ ” she continued. “ ‘
For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.
’ The
Upanishads—
the ancient Vedic scriptures—contain a very similar passage.”

“So
karma
is the way to everlasting life?” he murmured. “I thought it was something about evil deeds following you around forever.”

“It’s both, in a way.” For a moment, it was as if she struggled to find the words. “In my mother’s world,
karma
is the belief that one’s deeds determine who we can become in the next life. One should strive to do good—to
be
good—not just in one’s acts but in one’s thoughts as well. And in this way, from one life to the next, one moves to a higher and higher plane of existence—
samsara
—until one reaches
moksha,
a oneness with God, and the end of the cycle of rebirth.”

Rance gave a grunt of understanding. “So I’ll be trapped on this mortal coil for all eternity.”

She reached out to set a hand over his. “It’s not like that,” she said. “No one is trapped, save by his own choice or his own recalcitrance. Even the most evil person can change, can strive for
dharma
—the path of righteousness—and can find grace through devotion. And Rance, you are so far from evil . . .” She stopped, and shook her head. “Why are we even having this odd discussion? Does it have something to do with what Mr. Kemble said about Sir Arthur and Lord Percy?”

Rance shrugged, his shoulder scrubbing the back of the settle. “I guess I can’t escape the sense that I did, in a twisted way, cause Percy’s death.”

“And because Percy is dead, you deserve no happiness?” she suggested. “That’s rubbish, all of it.”

“But he wasn’t a bad sort.” His eyes held hers grimly. “And admit it, Anisha—I was a cheat. Sutherland has always said—and quite rightly—that I had no business at a gaming table. I had an advantage over those fellows, many of them. Because I could so often sense their emotions; their fear, their elation, even their propensity for taking risks—”

“Which is not the same as seeing their cards, Rance.”

“Pretty damned close,” he said, “especially after you play with a fellow for a while, as I had with Percy. But I was so . . .
afraid
.”

“Afraid how?”

“Afraid of becoming like my mother, I think,” he quietly admitted. “Afraid of madness.”

Anisha’s gaze turned inward. “When Raju was young, I remember Papa once warning Mamma that, absent a strong will, a strong Gift could madden a person,” she said. “I think that’s why Papa was so hard on him—to toughen his will. To
protect
him.”

“But when you’re young, how do you know if you’re strong enough? Or if fate will bring you to your knees?” He opened one hand plaintively. “To me, it seemed best not to think of it. To just deny whatever gifts I possessed—even to myself.”

“And you were so young,” Anisha murmured.

He nodded. “But what I did not realize then was that whatever skill I had—call it the Gift, or just instinct—it was nothing like hers, nor was it ever going to be,” he whispered. “Hers slowly consumed her with grief. But my going to prison—ah,
that
was the grief that ended her.”

“Yes, Raju said—” Sympathy flashing across her face, Anisha reached out to tuck a curl behind his ear. “He said Lady Lazonby died by her own hand.”

Rance felt his fist clench involuntarily. “It’s not commonly known,” he said. “But aye, she was in a dark place, and I was the last straw. As to me . . . well, I cheated those men. I cheated
Percy
. I didn’t kill him—but why can’t I escape the feeling that I did, and that what I’m reaping now is karma?”