The Bride Wore Pearls (46 page)

Anisha left aside her silly turban, suddenly disquieted. “
Namaste,
Mrs. Ashton,” she said, bowing. “Do you wish an audience? Or shall this be a private reading?”

Mrs. Ashton surprised her. “Private,” she said, her voice oddly clipped.

Their faces falling with disappointment, the older ladies nodded and swept from the tent.

Anisha joined her in sitting down, but Mrs. Ashton still looked decidedly uncomfortable. For a long moment, Anisha studied her across the table, finding herself inexplicably troubled. She was not going to like what she saw; she knew this without so much as unfurling the woman’s fingers.

Mrs. Ashton, she suspected, knew it, too.

Anisha sighed. “We do not need to do this, you know,” she said quietly. “We may simply sit here quietly until your friends are convinced you have surrendered with grace.”

Some dark, fleeting emotion sketched across the woman’s face, and she flung out her right hand, palm up. “No sensible person is afraid of nonsense,” she said haughtily. “Go ahead, mysterious Karishma. What do you see there? Six children and a brilliant marriage? Or riches beyond my wildest dreams?”

Anisha surrendered to the inevitable. “Either, I daresay, is possible,” she said, drawing the hand nearer.

And yet she knew that, for this woman, neither was likely.

For a time she delayed the truth, merely tracing the life and heart lines, along with their many obstructions, then methodically working her thumb over the hard Venus, the coarse Moon, the over-large Sun, all the while wondering at the sadness of it all.

After a time she shook her head. “This is not your dominant hand.”

The woman faltered. “What do you mean?”

“The hand you use most,” said Anisha. “Which is it?”

“I . . . it is both,” said the woman. “I’m ambidextrous. What of it?”

“Can you write with both hands?” Anisha prodded. “Sew with both hands? When you step, which foot goes first? One part of our nature, you see, must always lead the other.”

Mrs. Ashton simply blinked at her. “I step with the foot that is best positioned,” she said. “Yes, I can write and sew with both hands. A little better, perhaps, with the left.”

Anisha accepted this by nodding. “Give me the left as well, then, if you please.”

She had expected the woman would refuse, but she did not. “By all means,” said Mrs. Ashton, throwing open the left hand beside the right. “I have nothing to hide.”

But Anisha was very much afraid she might. Again, she inspected the open hand carefully. Never had she seen such a conflicting array of mounds and lines; such emotional inconsistencies and such a duality of nature.

At last she sat back on her stool. “You are Gemini born, are you not?” she said quietly. “In early June?”

Mrs. Ashton gave a swift intake of breath. “Yes.”

Anisha nodded. “And like many of your kind, you are of two natures,” she continued. “Natures which are often in conflict. You are torn in half, your better self being dominated by your lesser self. Indeed, ma’am, I fear you could be driven to destruction if you do not have a care.”

Mrs. Ashton sneered and drew back her hands. “What utter drivel.”

“I think you know it is not,” Anisha gently pressed. “Indeed, I think it is the very reason you sent your friends away. Though you hide it exceedingly well, in much of life you are confused and filled with doubt. But you refuse to acknowledge this uncertainty, even to your inner self. I sense you are a deeply unhappy woman, Mrs. Ashton, for all your kindnesses and volunteer work.”

The woman surprised her by throwing out both hands again. “Show me how you decide such nonsense,” she challenged.

Anisha did so, tracing over the lines and pointing out the ones that were stunted, the mounds which were more or less than was optimal, and the signs of conflict etched so deeply into both hands. “And perhaps most importantly,” she explained, “here your Sun mound is disproportionately large. It reveals your devotion—your
passion,
if you will.”

“And devotion has become a bad thing?” said Mrs. Ashton snidely.

“When you are devoted to something which is destructive, yes,” said Anisha. “You have the courage of your convictions, Mrs. Ashton—and they are eating you alive. And this—
ketu
—it is overdeveloped. This is called in English something like ‘tail of the dragon,’ and in
Mithuna
rashi
—in Gemini rising—developed as yours is, it is most unhealthy.”

The woman gave a sharp laugh. “Unhealthy in what way?”

“You have no freedom of spirit,” said Anisha. “You have also a remarkable ability to deny yourself pleasure. Moreover, your mind has been at times unwell, and you know this.”

“How dare you!” The woman recoiled. “You suggest that I am
mad
?”

“No, no.” Anisha let her shoulders sag; it was as she had expected. Too hard to explain. Too hard, even, for her to fully comprehend. How did someone become so tormented and unhappy?

“You are not mad,” she finally said. “Far from it. But you have let your anger and your determination and your denial of joy push you past rational thought. And if you continue on as you are, Mrs. Ashton, you could lose your moral compass entirely. Is this what you wish?”

“I think
you
are mad.” The woman trembled with rage now.

Anisha sat calmly. “Everyone can change, Mrs. Ashton,” she said quietly. “Shall I tell you how? For you, it can be done by focusing on your heart line and—”

“No, I should sooner tell
you
something,” she interjected, sweeping to her feet in a rustle of muslin and petticoats. “
Go. To. Hell.
”

Anisha felt a cold sense of fatalism now. “In my experience, we often make our own hell on this earth,” she replied. “Here is what it comes down to, Mrs. Ashton. You must choose a hand. Right? Or left? You must choose a side. Darkness? Or light? You cannot continue in pain as you are, half of you yearning for the goodness of your better self, and half of you caught in your own bitterness. I warn you out of genuine concern, and nothing more.”

“The only thing I’m
choosing
is to walk out of here.” Mrs. Ashton had already thrown back the tent flaps. “I know quite well what I’m about. As to grim warnings, let me share one with you—a good, Christian adage, too, not some half-baked Hindu balderdash dreamt up in a cloud of smoke and herbs.”

“Pray go ahead,” said Anisha evenly. “I try to keep an open mind.”

“Fine, then,” she said over her shoulder as she pushed past her startled friends. “
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas!
Now put that in your hookah and smoke it,
Lady
Anisha Stafford.”

Mouth agape, Mrs. Drummond stepped back inside the flaps. Mrs. Howe had clapped a hand over her mouth. For a long moment, they simply stared after their coworker, who was marching away, ramrod stiff, hands fisted, her skirts swishing over the grass at a rapidly increasing pace.

“My heavens!” Mrs. Howe finally said. “What’s got into Mrs. Ashton?”

Anisha lifted her gaze to meet Mrs. Howe’s. “I collect,” she said quietly, “that the lady did not wish her fortune told after all.”

R
ance sat slumped on the well-cushioned banquette of his first-class compartment, holding the unread newspaper he’d purchased while anxiously pacing Brighton Station. His gaze was focused instead on the rolling green Surrey countryside beyond the spitting rain, but his mind—at least half of it—was still in Mrs. Ford’s overgrown garden.

At the thought, his right hand curled involuntarily into the lush upholstery, as if it might, even now, choke the truth out of Alfred Hedge. But he had got as much as he ever would, he knew, out of that venal son of a bitch. And Hedge was going on to his great reward still clutching his secrets—if not today, then very soon indeed. There would be no vengeance on this earth, and in that, Rance could not help but feel cheated.

Nonetheless, he’d promised Anisha he would seek justice, not vengeance, and it was she who lay at the forefront of his mind. Anisha, and the strange sensations—the strange
certainty
—which even now seemed to connect him to her. Even as he hastened back to London, having departed in such haste that he’d not stopped to collect his belongings, he could not put away the sense of urgency—the near panic—that was driving him back to her.

Just then, however, the train lurched, the
clackity-clack-clack
slowing abruptly in a shriek of brakes. Thrown nearly off his seat, Rance seized hold of the door until the lugging of the train halted. Panic rising, he stood and craned his neck to look down the tracks.

The high brick arch of the Merstham tunnel stared back at him from its chalky outcropping, but Rance could not quite see the black entrance below that swallowed up the tracks.

From somewhere in the depths of the carriage behind him, he heard a door creak open, and in a moment a porter came trudging past in the mist, his footsteps crunching in the loose gravel below.

A moment later he came back again, shoulders slumping.

Rance flung open his door and looked down at the fellow. “What the devil is holding us up?” he demanded.

The porter blinked up at him through the mist. “Cows,” he said.

“
Cows
?” said Rance. “How the devil did cows get up this narrow passage?”

“Only the devil would know,” said the porter somewhat impertinently. “But cows there be, and they must be coaxed back down the line, for they cannot very well go through now, can they?”

“Well, for God’s sake, man!” Rance said. “Go and coax! We cannot simply sit here.”

“Well, I’ve got to get me boots on, don’t I?” said the fellow.

“Oh, a fashion plate for a porter!” said Rance, flinging the door wider. “God save us. I’ll see to the bloody cows myself.”

“Oh, sir,” said the fellow, flinging up a hand. “I wouldn’t!”

But it was too late. Rance had leapt down onto the gravel, and squarely into a pile of warm manure, splattering it high. “Bloody hell!” he gritted.

The porter squawked and leapt back—but not quickly enough. “Damn and blast,” said the fellow, fumbling in his massive pocket. “Another accursed Monday!”

Rance looked up from his fouled boots to see the poor chap wiping manure off his cheek. “Monday?”

His gaze caught Rance’s, accusing. “It’s always a Monday something goes arse over teakettle!” he grumbled, wiping down his coat sleeve. “Loose track last month. Falling rocks a fortnight past. Why, Monday last, a woman nearly gave birth rolling into Brighton Station! And if you think manure is a mess—well, at any rate, seems I oughtn’t trouble myself to get out of bed a’ Monday.”

But Rance stood frozen, stock-still on the track’s graveled verge.

The fellow was right. In all the haze of thwarted hope and long-denied passion, Rance had lost track of days. But this was
Monday.

And suddenly the impetus behind his awful sense of urgency came clear. Dear God. It was Monday. He had to get back to London. And he had to do it
now.

“Come along,” he gritted, hitching the fellow by the arm. “We are moving those cows—and by God, we’re doing it this instant, never mind the damned boots.”

A
nisha was inordinately relieved when, at long last, Lady Leeton’s footmen came to strike down the gaudy tent and haul the furnishings away. Along the grassy promenade, the stalls were being disassembled, too, and what remained of the Leetons’ guests had again shifted to the refreshment tent for afternoon tea.

“Here’s the last of it,” Sir Wilfred declared, gathering up the poles.

Anisha turned to the young servant who was loading. “Thank you,” she said as he piled the chairs onto a barrow. “Is the whole of your stables filled with tents and lumber?”

“Just the east block,” said Sir Wilfred grimly. “Even the bandstand comes apart. Hannah sold half my stable to make room for the lot.”

Anisha smiled. “As you say, she is determined.”

He laughed and, as the servant pushed the barrow away, Anisha raised a hand to her eyes, for unlike the graying south, the northerly sky was still bright with sunshine. Far across the lawns, she could see Lady Leeton walking toward the stables alongside her butler, and gesturing instructively at various tents and stalls, as if to say which should be taken down first.

“Pardon me,” said Leeton grimly, “but I’d best catch up with Hannah and do my part.”

Anisha felt suddenly grateful for a few moments of quiet. Glancing over her shoulder, she weighed returning to Madeleine and Lady Bessett in the refreshment tent, but the efficient Mrs. Day was presiding over tea, and Anisha had no wish to face Mrs. Ashton again.

She had not long to consider it, for Sir Wilfred nodded to his wife, turned, and started coming swiftly back along the path toward her, puffing, and red in the face.

“Hannah wishes to take you down to her stillroom to see her father’s collection of herbals,” he said when he drew up beside her. “Will you give her ten minutes, then meet her at the house? I must help Potter direct the unloading.”