The Golden Leopard (8 page)

Oscar padded ahead of her, turning once to make sure she was following. As her feet hit the steps—one, two, one, two—she shaped her lips into an aloof, don’t-talk-to-me smile. But halfway down the stairs, where they began the sweeping curve to the entrance hall, she caught sight of her father shaking hands with a man she recognized.

John Pageter. She paused for a moment, wondering if this encounter ought to be postponed. She was far from looking her best, and it would be less awkward for the both of them if they met without her father looking on.

She studied his face, brown from the South African sun, his well-formed nose and square chin combining to produce an effect that was both strong and sweetly pleasant. She remembered him as kind and a trifle shy with women. He had certainly been shy in
her
company.

With the awareness of a soldier who had come under scrutiny, he glanced up the staircase and caught her gaze. Immediately his lips widened into a smile, a friendly smile, no trace of a hidden purpose in it.

More at ease now, she continued down the stairs and moved to her father’s side. Near the front door Geeson was accepting hat and gloves from another guest, but with Pageter blocking her view, she could see nothing but a set of wide shoulders.

Pageter’s brown eyes were warm as he bowed to her. “Lord Sothingdon has been kind enough to welcome an additional guest,” he said, “a friend I quite improperly invited to accompany me to High Tor. In my defense, he has a slight connection with the family. I believe, Lady Jessica, that you are acquainted with him.”

Her breath caught in her throat. Pageter continued speaking as he moved aside and beckoned to the other gentleman, but she knew already who he must be. Cold with dread, she raised her head and gave Duran a haughty look as he made his bow to her father, and then to her.

She had expected a look of triumph, or at least the familiar mocking amusement in his eyes. But he only greeted her pleasantly—a polite murmur of her name, no more—before returning his attention to the earl.

Pageter made the introductions, praising Duran’s skill with a gun as if that were sufficient justification for his intrusion into a party where he’d not been invited. She longed to slap the both of them.

Duran silenced Pageter with a wave of his hand. “It is unpardonable of me to descend on you without an invitation, Lord Sothingdon. I seem to have left my manners in India. There was good hunting there, of course, but I missed the pleasures of tramping the English countryside in pursuit of partridge and grouse. When Pageter told me that he was off for several weeks to do precisely that, the temptation to impose on him—and on you—was overwhelming.”

Jessica could practically feel her father dissolving under Duran’s flattery. He always played the right notes, the ones that appealed to his victim’s pride or favorite hobbyhorse. That tribute to English shooting parties had won the earl’s heart in an instant.

“Well, well, I’m glad to have you here,” he said gruffly. “A good time for it, what? Pageter has told me that you know my daughter.”

Duran spared her a polite glance. “Only very slightly, I’m afraid. We met a number of years ago at one of those overcrowded London parties. I expect the charming Lady Jessica has no recollection of me at all.”

“My lamentable memory,” she said coolly, wondering if she imagined a flash of humor in his eyes.

“Lord Sothingdon,” he said, turning back to his host, “I hope you will do me the honor of accepting a token of my gratitude for your hospitality. While I was purchasing a gun—several of them, I must confess—at Joseph Manton’s establishment, I asked him to select one that you might approve for yourself.”

Duran made a gesture, and two men approached from the shadows.

Jessica, who had failed to notice them, was as astonished as the earl when they stepped forward and bowed. Both were dark-skinned and quietly exotic, clad in white tunics belted with wide gray sashes over loose white trousers. They wore turbans, which were knotted just above their right ears, and the younger man was holding a large, flat mahogany case. The older one undid the clasp and raised the lid.

Sothingdon gasped.

Jessica could not imagine what her father found so wonderful about the contents. The leather-lined case held a long-barreled rifle with a shiny wooden stock, along with the usual implements for loading and cleaning. But what of it? He was an extravagant collector of guns and already owned several score of them.

Nonetheless, he was undeniably impressed. When the gun was lifted from the case and put into his hands, he caressed it with the affection he might have given to a new grandchild. “Splendid workmanship,” he said, sounding a bit dazed. “Splendid.”

“I had thought you would be interested in the new percussion ignition,” said Duran, “but Manton was sure you’d prefer the traditional flintlock.”

“Oh, yes. Yes indeed. I don’t hold with these modern experiments. Apt to blow up in your hands, what?”

“I certainly hope not,” Duran replied. “I bought two of them for myself.”

“Then you must explain your reasons. Come along to my study and we’ll have a whisky while the servants see to your rooms. Jessica, make certain the gentlemen are settled, will you?”

And thus, she thought, glaring at Duran’s straight back, did the serpent slither into the garden.

Besides, how else was she to deduce what he was up to? If Duran had come to High Tor merely for the shooting, she would eat an unplucked partridge.

He did shoot, though, every day. At first she watched from a distance, perched on a flat rock atop one of the high tors that gave the estate its name, but she felt uneasy there on her own. Exposed, as if other watchers had secreted themselves on the tor, spying on her the way she was spying on Duran.

Once she was nearly certain she had spotted a dun-colored figure crouched behind an outcropping of stone. But when she rose to take a better look, there was only a clump of bracken. The next morning she saw a flash, and then another, like sunlight reflecting off glass, from a hill the other side of where the gentlemen were gathered. For a long time she focused her gaze on that hill, but no more flashes caught her eye.

Duran had got on her nerves, she decided. That would explain it. But the sensation of being observed grew stronger, and on the third morning she abandoned the desolate tors and joined a snoozing Lord Marley at the crest of a grassy hill overlooking the target range. There, in the shade provided by a pair of oaks, were three high-backed benches mounded with cushions and a low table laid out with apples and pears.

Spying in comfort
, thought Jessica, settling down with a pear to the accompaniment of Lord Marley’s snores. Below, perhaps fifty yards away, the sportsmen clustered in groups, drinking mugs of brandy-laced coffee and placing wagers.

The serious business of bagging partridges and gray grouse would not begin until tomorrow, she knew. Sothingdon shooting parties followed a predictable schedule. Yesterday the men had gone after the elusive Dartmoor hares, and today would be devoted to pigeon trapshooting.

There was no mistaking Duran, the midmorning sunlight gilding his hair as he prowled among the drabber beasts of the field. Waiting quietly to one side, laden with powder flask, shot belt, and a pair of rifles, was his loader, the young Hindu who had accompanied him to High Tor.

The other Hindu stood alone on the same bare hillock where Jessica had seen him each day, as still as a pillar of salt in his long white tunic and snowy turban. Lord Duran’s valet, according to the servants, all of whom were in awe of the man. He never ate meat, they said, and he had healed Bridget’s runny eyes with drops and soothed the turn boy’s burned hands with an ointment he taught the boy’s mother to make, and he spoke the King’s English like Quality except for some words he didn’t know. He asked polite enough, though, and smiled when the words weren’t the sort you could say in front of the vicar. He put them in mind of a vicar, come to think of it, heathen though he be.

She’d wanted to learn more about Duran’s odd attendants, but even under her father’s benign rule, gossiping with the servants was frowned upon. Mostly by the servants themselves, she had realized when the talkative footman she’d been plying for information was shushed by the parlor maid.

Duran, looking relaxed, was conversing with John Pageter and two other gentlemen while servants unloaded three large wooden boxes from a wagon and carried them to a spot about thirty yards beyond where the men were standing. Not long after, the first pigeon was loosed and promptly brought down by her father’s bullet. In turn, each of the gentlemen took a shot, with Duran among the few who missed.

He missed his second shot as well, laughing when Sir Gareth offered the use of his spectacles. He made a show of assuming the proper stance on his third try. This time the pigeon fell. With a theatrical gesture of relief, he bowed to an enthusiastic round of applause.

“Well, then,” said Lord Marley, who had awakened at the first shot. “I have won two hundred guineas and lost half of it back. The young man appears to be finding his range.”

“You were betting on Lord Duran?”

“Against him. Nearly all the wagering is focused on Duran, him being a stranger and an erratic shot. He don’t mind losing, though, I’ll give him that much.”

“Has he lost a great deal?”

“To be precise, he’s missing, not losing. Says he foreswore gaming, but doesn’t object if others use him for their own wagers. It’s young Pageter who’s playing deep. Owes me twelve hundred already, and the stakes will triple once the real shooting begins. There’s gaming in the evenings as well, although I wouldn’t bet against Duran at the whist table. Pageter’s winning a little there, but not enough to cover his other losses.”

She could hardly believe what she was hearing. John Pageter was the most serious-minded, upright man she had ever known. Of course he gambled—all gentlemen did—but never to excess. Not John. Something was wrong here.

Suddenly unable to watch any longer, she took leave of Lord Marley and set out for the house, hoping that Helena would arrive today with the bank drafts for her clients. That would provide the excuse she needed to leave High Tor and its most annoying resident.

The post had arrived, she saw by the orderly chaos in the entrance hall. Geeson was sorting the contents of the leather bag into neat piles and laying them out on a sideboard while footmen with chased-silver trays moved up and down the staircase, delivering letters to the guest rooms and quickly returning for another stack.

Smiling when she came up to him, Geeson handed her three letters, two from clients and one from her secretary, which she opened and read immediately. Helena’s cold had worsened, but she expected to be well enough to travel before the end of the week. Lord Duran had stopped calling at the town house.

No surprise there. Jessica was scanning the last of Helena’s message when Mariah, an open letter in her hand, slipped from the drawing room and walked unsteadily toward the staircase. Her face was pale as milk.

Jessica moved to intercept her. “What is it? Have you received bad news?”

Mariah gazed at her kidskin slippers. “No. Not really. But I shall have to leave for Dorset.” The letter fluttered in her hand. “Do you suppose it would be acceptable for me to wait until morning? But there’s no reason—is there?—since it won’t be dark for hours and hours yet.”

The foyer was no place to extract the reason for her distress. “Come with me,” Jessica said, gripping her arm and towing her toward the rear passageway.

By the time they arrived at the one place in the house that was certain to be deserted, Mariah had begun to weep. “Why are we here?” she whimpered.

“Because I hate it here.” Jessica unlatched the door and tugged her sister into the conservatory. And stopped as if she had slammed into an invisible wall. “God in heaven, Mariah. Did you do this?”

Brilliant sunlight streamed through clear glass panes, all of them intact. Directly ahead, the tiled floor gave way to gravel paths, a pair of them, each winding through a patchwork of lush green plants and bright flowers. Stunned, she released Mariah’s arm to examine an herb garden filled with rosemary, feverfew, Saint-John’s-wort, and lavender.

Who could have done this? Not her father, who wouldn’t know a turnip from his elbow.

Mariah was still standing by the door, her expression confused and miserable. “I didn’t think you’d ever set foot in here, Jessica. Perhaps I should have told you. I had nothing to do with it, of course.”