Read The Sandalwood Princess Online
Authors: Loretta Chase
“The ailment came upon him suddenly, memsahib.”
Amanda leapt from her chair. “What have you done to him, you wicked creature?”
“Amanda!”
Ignoring the widow, Amanda ran to the door, but Padji backed up, blocking it.
“Let me by!” she shouted. She tried to push him out of her way. She might as well have tried to move a stone mountain. Tears sprang to her eyes. “What is the matter with you?” she cried. “Who is mistress here? Get out of my way!”
She started to move to the other doorway, but Padji clasped her arm.
“No, mistress. It is unseemly.”
“He’s quite right, for once,” Mrs. Gales put in before Amanda could retort. “You cannot go to the man’s room, my dear. Brentick would be mortified.”
“For God’s sake, Leticia, he might be dead, for all we know—and you speak of
embarrassment.”
“He is not dead, mistress. Did you ask me to kill him?” Padji enquired gravely. “No, you did not desire this.”
Mrs. Gales threw him a baleful look.
“Then what’s wrong with him?” Amanda asked, forcing steadiness into her voice. Her hands were shaking. “Why won’t you let me see him?”
“He would not like it,” said Padji. “The memsahib Gales speaks true. He would be ashamed to be seen, weak and ill, by the mistress.”
“Drat you, I’ve already seen him weak and ill.”
Padji shrugged. Amanda turned pleading eyes to Mrs. Gales.
The widow rose and crossed the room to release Amanda from Padji’s custody. “If you wish,” she said calmly, “we shall send James to check on Brentick. There is no need for you to go yourself.” She dropped her voice to add, “My dear, you cannot go to the man’s bedchamber.”
Amanda did not care for “cannot” and “ought not”. Over the past few weeks, Padji’s cool distrust of her butler had swelled to black hostility. Tonight, Mr. Brentick, who was never ill, always by, was ill and absent. Meanwhile, Padji wore an ominously innocent expression. In these observations Amanda found quite enough to overcome any absurd notions of propriety.
On the other hand, Mrs. Gales’s pitying expression gave Amanda pause. She flushed, and though she did agree to sending James, she insisted on a note from Mr. Brentick. If he was too ill to write, she’d go to him.
The footman went, and the note duly arrived a short while later. Mr. Brentick assured her he simply had a sore throat. He preferred to keep away from the rest of the household until he felt certain it was not a symptom of a contagious ailment.
Two hours after a dinner only the widow tasted, and following a frustrating conversation with Padji, Amanda joined Mrs. Gales in the drawing room.
“They did quarrel,” Amanda said as she dropped wearily onto the sofa. “Padji admitted they both lost their tempers. He says he
may
have hurt Mr. Brentick a little, but only enough to calm him down. I can’t believe Mr. Brentick would be so rash as to fight with Padji.”
“I understand tempers have flared more than once belowstairs,” said Mrs. Gales. “Bella says Padji has been teasing Brentick unmercifully from the start. Recently, he has taken to humiliation. Only yesterday, she says, Padji peered down at the man’s head, and there before all the staff, very amiably offered to remove the
lice.”
“Lice?” Amanda echoed blankly. “But that is insane. You know how fastidious Mr. Brentick is.”
“I’m afraid Padji knows as well. It is just the sort of comment to make Brentick quite wild.”
Amanda nodded. She remembered how upset he’d become the day he’d arrived, when Padji had complained that Mr. Brentick stank like a pig.
“I collect your cook is bent on driving him away, Amanda. If, that is, he doesn’t drive him mad, first.” The widow
hesitated briefly before adding, “I think you know why, my dear.”
Amanda turned away. She knew why. Padji was convinced Mr. Brentick meant her ill. He claimed the butler flattered and bewitched her, day by day stealing her trust and affection, only to satisfy his base male appetite. When Amanda argued that her butler had been a thorough gentleman for more than four months, Padji only sneered. Brentick sahib was cunning. He wanted the mistress completely in his power. By the time he made himself her lover, his besotted victim would have given over all control to him. All her wealth would fall into his hands. Then, when he’d stripped her of reason, honour, and worldly goods, he’d abandon her. Padji declared he could no longer stand idly by, watching her make the same mistake his former mistress had made with Richard Whitestone.
“I know why,” Amanda answered at last. “Padji has decided he must save me from myself.’’
“I daresay you could discharge him.”
“How could I? He believes he’s protecting me, which is his duty, his
dharma.
In any case, Padji chooses his employers. They don’t choose him.”
Amanda rose from the sofa to take a restless turn about the room, as though she’d find some other answer there. Yet she knew there was but one answer. Padji wouldn’t kill Mr. Brentick outright, because that, for some inscrutable reason, required his mistress’s command. He would, however, make the man’s life hell.
“Padji wouldn’t go, even if I discharged him,” she said, pausing by Mrs. Gales’s chair. “I owe him far too much to attempt that anyhow. Yet if he stays, he won’t leave Mr. Brentick alone. It’s my fault. The way I’ve behaved... because I wanted as much of Mr. Brentick’s company as I could get. It was enough for me, truly it was—much more than I’d ever hoped for.”
Mrs. Gales took her hand and patted it. “My dear,” she said simply.
“I suppose this is what the rani meant when she spoke of
a love beyond reason,” Amanda continued. “It had already taken hold of me, long before I realised, and so I was beyond thinking, even when I knew the truth. I wanted only to be with him. I would have done whatever he asked, I think. No wonder you were so worried, all of you. I gave you reason enough. Yet you’ve been so kind and patient, Leticia.” She squeezed the widow’s hand. “I wish I’d listened, if only to spare you anxiety.”
“I’m afraid I’ve not been terribly helpful.”
“Because you don’t like to interfere or nag. In any case, I wouldn’t have listened. But the madness is done now,” Amanda said. Her voice shook as she added, “We’ll go to London, and take Padji with us. That will be best. London will keep us busy enough. We’ll go to parties, Leticia, and— and we’ll drive in the park. They shall have to endure me this time, because I have money. Not ‘poor Miss Cavencourt’ any longer, am I, thanks to Roderick? Even respectable now, after a fashion. You don’t know about—about before, do you? That’s all right. I’ll tell you. Not tonight, but tomorrow, perhaps, and you will tell me how to go on. You always know, Leticia. I should have listened to you, long ago.”
She bent and hugged her companion. “I wish I had listened,” she whispered. “You said he was too handsome, didn’t you?”
She gave an unsteady laugh, and hurried from the room.
By the following day Philip had recovered sufficiently to attend his employer in the library. His neckcloth concealed the bruises on his throat, and his hoarseness was easily explained as the aftereffects of a sore throat. If he staggered slightly when Miss Cavencourt outlined her plans to depart for London in early March, that, too, could be blamed on aftereffects.
“We shall probably return at the end of the Season,” she said composedly, though she averted her gaze. “I daresay you’ll manage with Mrs. Swanslow and Jane.”
So, she did not intend to take him with her? This must be Padji’s doing. What had the curst Indian told her? Gad, what the devil was he thinking? What did it matter? Philip would not have gone with her in any case. This was a pose, not a bloody career!
“Certainly, miss,’’ he said meekly.
“I shall keep you apprised of our needs.” She took up her pen. “That will be all,” she added dismissively.
“I beg your pardon?”
She looked up, but still not directly at him.
“You aren’t intending to work on your manuscript, miss?”
“Yes, I am, but I shan’t trouble you today. You and Mrs. Swanslow will have enough to do, with preparations.”
“We do have nearly a month,” he said stubbornly.
“I wish to work alone today, Mr. Brentick,” came the chilly reply.
Disagreeably chilly. The cold seemed to enter his bloodstream and trace frost patterns about his heart.
She was shutting him out. Small wonder, if Padji had been smearing his character. Very well. The Falcon was not about to beg for explanations.
Philip bowed and headed for the door. His fingers closed upon the handle, then froze there, his rage smothered in a flood of numbing desolation.
He swung round, saw her dark head bent over her work, and heard another man’s voice—it could not be his—low, sharp, demanding—”For God’s sake, what have I done?”
Her head shot up, and he saw her eyes glittering. Anger, he thought, as he returned to the worktable. When he neared, the glitter resolved to golden mist. Tears.
“What have I done?” he repeated. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She brushed hastily at her eyes. “I have a headache.”
“I shall ask Padji to make up one of his herbal teas,” he said.
“No! Oh, Mr. Brentick—” She flung the pen down. “Just keep away from him, will you? Stay out of the kitchen.
That is an order. Stay out of his way.”
“I see,” he said tightly. “Stay out of his way, stay out of your way. May I ask, miss, where you propose I take myself?”
She was staring at him now, her golden gaze wide and wondering as it darted from his face to his tightly clenched hands. He unclenched them.
“Gad, but you
do
have a temper,” she said softly.
He swallowed. “I beg your pardon, Miss Cavencourt.”
“You needn’t apologise. I’ve heard Padji’s kept you at boiling point. That’s why I ordered you to keep out of his way. He told me you quarrelled yesterday, and he drove you to violence.”
“We had a misunderstanding, miss,” Philip said. “I was ill and out of sorts and—”
“And he might have killed you.” She looked away, to the fire. “We’ll be gone in less than a month. Surely you can keep away for that time.”
“Yes, miss. Certainty, miss.”
For the second time, Philip bowed himself out of the room, enlightened, yet no more satisfied than before.
A long day loomed ahead of him. He hadn’t lied about not having enough to do. He’d trained his staff so well, they rarely needed his supervision. They had merely two ladies to tend, and no entertainments to clean up after. The scrubbing, dusting, and polishing was always done by early morning. He’d arranged all, in fact, to leave him free to keep his employer company most of the day.
Now she didn’t want his company.
Now he discovered he wanted hers.
Philip returned to his room—carefully avoiding the kitchen en route—collected his coat and his cigar case, and headed for the garden.
Two cheroots later, Philip had left the garden and wandered out to the moors. The snow had melted and the air, though still cold, carried a faint promise of spring. He found the boulders where he and his employer had enjoyed their first picnic. There he sat, staring at the silver case she’d given him.
She was leaving, finally, and he was relieved, naturally. One long maddening year it had been, maddening even at the last. After all the Falcon’s clever plans and manipulations, it was Padji who’d changed her mind, not the sensible widow. All those long walks, the sledding, the skating—all unnecessary.
Brentick had aroused Mrs. Gales’s suspicions, as he’d intended, but in the end it was Padji who’d served him. Miss Cavencourt was returning to the world in order to keep her cook from killing her butler.
A waste of time, all those hours spent alone together, here in the brooding hills. A waste of time, fighting temptation, day after day. A dangerous waste of time. They’ve grown too close, and he’d come to know her too well. She’d come to live within him, a part of him, just as her voice and scent formed some part of the air he breathed. Today the world about him was wrong somehow, dislocated, because she was missing.
It was the same wrongness and dislocation he’d felt when she dismissed him from the library. They were supposed to be together.
Together, Amanda. You need me to look after you. You’re supposed to be with me. I made it so.
He gazed about the bleak landscape and saw regret. He closed his eyes and tried to force the demoralising truth back into its dark closet, but it would not be stifled. The Falcon could lie to everyone but himself. He loved her... and in a month, he’d betray her.
Miss
Cavencourt
never locked up the receipt for the Laughing Princess because she didn’t need to. The bank staff knew her. Only she could claim her statue. Thus, one week before her scheduled departure, Philip had merely to slip the receipt among the clutter of estate office documents he was organising into tidy piles. It was equally simple, a short while later, to pretend to find it for the first time.
“An item of value, it says, miss,” he said, handing her the piece of paper. “Jewellery, I daresay. I presume you’ll wish to take it to London.”