The Golden Leopard (12 page)

Head bowed, she stood perfectly still when he reached inside her bodice to unloose the tapes attaching it to her waistband. In a whisper of satin, the skirt pooled at her feet.

Next he removed the bodice, carefully tugging the puffy sleeves down her arms. Once, when his hand brushed her bare shoulder, she made a tiny sound of pain.

His heart was pounding like the feet of elephants on a dry Deccan riverbed. The simplest touch hurt her. More than once, more than a score of times in the aftermath of battle, he had held a dying comrade in his arms. He had schooled himself to feel nothing. To feel was to lose control of himself, and what good was he then?

Closing his mind to what he was doing, he stripped her with practiced efficiency. When an underslip of soft muslin had joined her skirt on the carpet, he untied the bow on her corset and unwrapped the laces from their hooks. She hadn’t used to wear a corset. The Jessica he remembered could never bear to be confined.

She hadn’t played by the rules, either. Not so many years ago, defying every convention, she had leaped into an affair with a man far beneath her in birth, breeding, and fortune. He still wondered why.

Obviously she had come to regret it. And rightly so.

A short time later, clad only in stockings and a filmy shift, she placed her hand on his for support and stepped away from the mound of fabric ringing her ankles.

His hand burned where she touched him, all too briefly, before she let go and moved slowly toward the bed. He felt the effort it cost her, that silent pilgrimage, and knew better than to offer assistance. The single candle carved her out in ivory against the long black shadow she cast on the wall.

Helplessly, he watched her lower herself on the edge of the tall bed and begin to remove her stockings. That much intimacy, he understood, was forbidden him.

So be it. But if she thought he’d walk away from her now, she was about to learn otherwise. Approaching her from the opposite side of the bed, he spoke in the softest tone he could produce. “I’m going to draw down the bedcovers and arrange the pillows for you. Then I’ll leave, but only for a short time.”

She looked over her shoulder at him in alarm.

“If you lock the door while I’m gone, I’ll direct your father to send for a physician. Probably I should do so in any case. But I mean to try something else first, and it will not require me to betray your secret.” That was a lie, but only a small one. “Is there anything I can bring you when I return?”

For a time he thought she wasn’t going to answer. The bed readied and the pillows fluffed, he was on his way out when he heard a sound—one word—coming from the bed. She had accepted his intention to return.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll bring ice.”

Next door, in the small parlor that linked the two bedchambers assigned to Lords Pageter and Duran, Arjuna was cleaning and oiling their guns. Duran gestured him to continue and proceeded quickly to the dressing room where Shivaji sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed and hands resting, palms upturned, on his knees.

Only his lips moved when he spoke. “The lady has agreed to assist us?”

Duran required a few seconds to decipher the question. “I—no. We hadn’t a chance to discuss it. She is ill with a headache.”

“A common excuse, I believe, when a female does not wish to cooperate.” Shivaji rose in a single, fluid motion. “We shall walk no farther on this false trail. You will prepare to depart in the early morning.”

“Aren’t you listening?” Duran seized a handful of Shivaji’s tunic. “She’s
ill
. Everything hurts her. Sound. Light. She can’t bear to be touched. Look, there must be something in your demon’s closet to help her. Laudanum?”

Shivaji studied him for several moments, as if seeking something in his face. “Is the pain concentrated on one side of her head?”

Duran tried to remember how she had looked. What she had said. “I don’t know,” he admitted, releasing his grip and taking a step back. “Is that significant?”

“It is usually the case. I suspect she suffers from a type of severe, recurring headache that generally afflicts women, although I have an uncle who experiences them regularly.” Shivaji went to the wooden cabinet, which was set on a small table in the corner of the dressing room, and began removing vials and packets from the drawers. “There is no remedy. In safe amounts laudanum is ineffective, and it can create a harmful dependency. Will the Lady Jessica permit me to examine her?”

“She doesn’t want anyone to know. I insisted on keeping watch. She asked for ice.”

“Very well. I shall prepare a draught of lavender tea infused with cloves and feverfew, and brew a tea with ginger root that should be given her if she is nauseated. Since you are to sit with her, perhaps you will wish to change your clothing. Do so while I send Arjuna to procure what is required. Then I shall tell you what to expect and how to deal with it.”

Half an hour later,
a cyclone of instructions whirling in his head, Duran reentered Jessica’s darkened bedchamber with a large tray carefully balanced between two shaking hands. On it were a pair of teapots, a glass and a cup, a small silver bucket filled with ice, another brimming with hot water, a pile of linen napkins and towels, and three basins stacked one on top of the other. Arjuna would be sent at intervals to replenish the supplies.

“Sleep is best,” Shivaji had advised several times. “Never disturb her when she sleeps, and do not be so busy trying to help that you keep her awake.”

She wasn’t sleeping now. Duran set the tray on a table near the door, moved the lone candle to a spot on the mantelpiece where its light did not reach the bed, and approached her on stockinged feet. “Can you swallow some lukewarm tea? It’s made with herbs that may dull the pain a bit. I have ice, if you prefer. But I’m told it’s best to wrap the ice in towels and—”

When she winced he clamped his lips together, mentally kicking himself.

At the corners, her mouth curved. “Tea,” she said on a puff of air.

Relief made him clumsy, but he managed to fill the cup and carry it to the bed without spilling more than half the contents. She had struggled upright. He put one hand at her back to hold her while she drank, a fragrance of lavender and cloves wafting from the cup and mingling with the delicate lilac scent she favored.

Her hair was pinned in coils. When she had emptied the cup he set it aside and, still holding her, began gently to remove the pins with his other hand. She leaned forward to make it easier. While he dealt with the side closest to him she experienced no difficulty, but when he touched the right side of her head, a cry escaped her.

Instantly he stopped, his hand hovering above her.

“It will feel better,” she whispered, “when the pins are out.”

Removing them was agonizing for her, he could tell, but she made no sound as one by one they slid free and her long, heavy hair spread around her shoulders. He banked pillows behind her—Shivaji had suggested that—and gave her a second cup of the tea. She drank most of it before turning her head away.

Dismissing him. He sensed her withdrawing into herself and understood that she was now to be left alone.

He withdrew as well, to finish closing the curtains. Then he slumped onto a hard-backed chair and sat with his elbows propped on his knees and his face buried in his hands. He couldn’t bear seeing her like this. Not Jessica, who had always charted her own course and commanded the elements like a goddess. At least that was the impression she had given him during the short time they spent together.

Had he left the party a few minutes earlier, they would never have met at all. It was supposed to have been his last night in London, and he’d stopped by Lady Somebody’s ball on a hunt for several gentlemen who owed him money. Meandering from room to room, he neatly cornered his prey and accepted whatever they were carrying—banknotes, rings, pocket watches—to cover their gaming debts. Naturally he couldn’t let it be known that he was departing on an India trader the very next morning. They’d never have paid up.

His voyage to England, a dream he was unaware he’d had until the opportunity presented itself, had come to nothing in the end. His expectations had been too high, perhaps, and the reality too bloody realistic.

His very distant cousin Bertram, eleventh Baron Duran, turned out to have been a successful drunkard and a dismal gambler before tripping over one of his wife’s lapdogs and tumbling down a flight of stairs. He left behind him a mountain of debts, a bad-tempered wife, two ill-favored daughters, and a besmirched title that, in the absence of any closer male relation, had devolved upon an astonished Hugo Duran. The agent who finally located him in Calcutta had conveyed the news without mentioning the debts and the daughters.

Down on his luck at the time, Duran had quite fancied the notion of assuming his new position. Within a week he’d sold his small house and his string of excellent horses and set out for his ancestral home.

Six months later, gazing on the derelict house and weedy gardens, he bade farewell to that most treacherous of whores—hope.

The property was not entailed, and the owner of a nearby estate, eager to expand his holdings, paid a decent price for Duran’s inheritance. He ought to have pocketed the money and hared straightaway back to India, where he might have lived in style for several years. But for reasons that still eluded him, he had paid his cousin’s debts and made generous provisions for the two unlovely daughters, who thanked him by demanding he provide them husbands as well. That meant extravagant dowries, and there went the last of his money.

Or nearly the last, because he had set aside the fare to India and a few hundred pounds for a London holiday. The Season was in full swing, the viscount to whom he’d sold his property had offered to sponsor him, and for several weeks he cut a dash at all the best places.

England suited him. He even liked the climate. But far too soon he was attending his last party and making a final circuit of the ballroom when he saw, gazing at him from a pair of wide, curious eyes, a stunningly beautiful young woman.

There was no accounting for his dizzying suspicion that his life had just unalterably changed.

As it turned out, only the next three weeks were affected. He’d paid a substantial penalty to secure passage on a later sailing and spent his days gambling for funds to keep himself afloat in the meantime. His nights had been spent with Lady Jessica Carville.

A small sound cut into his reflections, and the bedchamber door opened to admit Shivaji with a trayful of fresh supplies. He set it on the table and stood for a considerable time looking down at the still, pale figure on the bed. Then he beckoned Duran into the passageway.

“The pain increases,” he said. “She grows restless. Soon she will awaken, and then you may wrap cloths dipped in warm water around her wrists and ankles to draw the blood from her head. The packets of crushed ice should be placed on her forehead, temples, or at the back of her neck—but only if she wishes. The pain, as I expect you have realized, is on the right side. If she allows it, you should massage these points.” Shivaji lifted his hands and applied pressure to Duran’s temples, a point between his eyes, and various places on his scalp. “Let her guide you,” he cautioned. “And remain near her with a basin. She will be sick.”

His chest aching as if something inside were straining to get out, Duran returned to the chair at Jessica’s bedside and resumed his vigil.

Not long after, she began to choke.

He was there in a heartbeat, supporting her with one hand and holding a basin with the other while she retched uncontrollably. When the spasms calmed he fed her cool ginger tea with a spoon, dabbed her chin with a soft napkin, and watched her sag back onto the pillows with a hushed moan.

He had scarcely put the soiled basin aside and taken hold of a clean one when the cycle began again. For what felt like a month in purgatory, he struggled to discern what she needed and to provide it. Nearly always he was guessing what to do, sure he’d muddle it up, wondering if he ought to bring in Shivaji to help. Jessica deserved better than a fumbling, flustered amateur.