“Wha—” She shook her head, but the words didn’t seem to come out. For once in her life, Penelope Deveraux Staines was rendered completely and entirely without words. He could see her trying to comprehend, trying to figure out how they had gone from there to here, and failing entirely. He wasn’t entirely sure he understood himself. “You—I—what?”
She was owed an explanation. He didn’t have one. At least, not one he could cram into coherence.
“I just . . . I can’t do this.”
Penelope’s cheekbones suddenly seemed very prominent and there were hollows under them that had not been there before. “Do what?” she demanded, never letting go of his gaze, daring him to say it out loud. “What? Make love to me? Take me to bed?”
“Your husband’s bed.” That was the crux of it. There was no way around it. Damn it, it was for her own good.
Penelope turned on him a glare of truly ferocious proportions. “Don’t say his name.”
Alex’s lips tightened. Managing, by heroic effort, to keep his voice level, he said, “I am in his house, in his room, with his wife. What am I supposed to say?”
His words had an incendiary effect. “Is that how you think of me? As someone else’s chattel? His house, his room, his wife?” Penelope mimicked. “Nothing more than an appendage of Lord Frederick Staines, Special Envoy to His Majesty the Nizam?”
Alex looked at her in surprise at the vehemence of her reaction. “You know it’s not.”
Penelope drew a breath in sharply through her nostrils. “It is, isn’t it? Just another piece of baggage to be carted about from place to place, preferably shoved into a palanquin where it won’t bother anyone. Perhaps you might ask Freddy if he’d be willing to let you borrow me. You’d do the same for his horse, wouldn’t you? Or his pistol, or his sword, or his snuffbox, or his—”
“Don’t,” he said roughly, breaking into her matter-of-fact catalogue of Lord Frederick’s possessions, before it could go on and on, through neck cloths and stickpins and pantaloons. There was something in her face that unnerved him. A bleakness so staggering that he felt all his anger collide and crumble against it. “Good God. I had no idea you felt that way. Penelope—”
Anger turning to concern, he reached for her, but she jerked away from his hand, pushing past him so abruptly that the force of her passage sent him staggering against the bed, clipping his shins on the baseboard. Off balance, Alex grabbed blindly at the mosquito netting, but his hand passed through empty air, and he landed heavily with one hand against the mattress.
Where was the bloody mosquito netting?
Across the room, Penelope pivoted on her heel to face him, like an entire artillery regiment about to go blazing into battle.
“Well, I’m not his bloody pistol,” she announced, bright patches of color burning in her hollow cheeks. “Or his horse, or anything else belonging to Freddy bloody Staines. It’s my body, my life, my choice. Not his and certainly not yours.”
It would have been a very effective oration, but Alex was distracted by the mosquito netting, or rather the lack of it. The bars were bare. The fine film of mosquito netting that usually hung from the poles, shrouding the bed in folds of fabric, was missing. There was something about its absence that niggled at him.
“Well?” Penelope demanded, one foot tapping against the bare boards of the floor. “What do you have to say?”
Alex squinted up at the bare poles where the mosquito netting should have hung. “What happened to the mosquito netting?”
“The what?” Penelope stared at him as though he had just grown an extra head.
“The mosquito netting,” said Alex.
“The mosquito netting,” Penelope repeated, her voice dripping with a nicely calculated mixture of derision and incredulity. “You are asking me about the mosquito netting.”
“Yes,” replied Alex, goaded. “The transparent thing that usually hangs from the bed.”
Penelope tossed her head, sending the strap of her shift sliding down one shoulder, revealing the upper curve of one breast. “It was off when I came in. At least, it must have been. I don’t remember moving it. I didn’t think about it.” Nor should he, her tone seemed to imply.
“One generally wouldn’t.” A horrible suspicion was beginning to coalesce in Alex’s mind, blotting out other, lesser concerns. His troubled eyes met hers. “When was the last time you saw it in place?”
Penelope shrugged, sending her shift plunging still lower. “You needn’t pretend an interest in my sleeping arrangements,” she said caustically. “We’ve covered that quite thoroughly already.”
Alex gave her an exasperated look. “This isn’t bloody about that.” Before she could launch whatever sarcastic comment was cruising to her lips, Alex said hurriedly, “What happened with the snake? Where was it when you first saw it?”
Turning sharply away, Penelope yanked her strap back into place. “There’s nothing to tell. I tossed my dress onto the floor and it must have landed on that hideous thing. It got annoyed. I shot it.”
“But how did it get here?”
“I think we should name it,” said Penelope flippantly. “It seems disrespectful to just refer to it as ‘it.’ How about Marmaduke?”
Irritable with frustrated desire, Alex snapped, “I’m not calling the bloody snake Marmaduke!”
Penelope raised an eyebrow at him. The strap of her shift had begun to slide again.
Flushing, Alex looked away. “Fine. Did you consider that, er, Marmaduke might not have made his way here of his own accord?”
“Are you suggesting that Marmaduke didn’t want to see me?” Penelope lowered her lashes suggestively, but underneath them, her eyes were wary. He knew she knew what he was driving at. But Alex spelled it out anyway.
“What I’m suggesting is that someone else was quite eager for Marmaduke”—did they really have to keep calling it that?—“to make your acquaintance.”
Tilting her head back, Penelope looked Alex square in the eye. “Why not just say it? You think someone wants me dead.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Yes.”
He didn’t bother to sugarcoat it. Penelope gave him points for that, at least. “Other than you, you mean,” she said provocatively.
Alex rubbed a hand across his brow, before letting it fall heavily to his side. “I don’t want you dead,” he said wearily. There were shadows under his eyes and in them, too. Despite herself, Penelope could feel some of her indignation draining away. He looked at her and said simply, “But someone else does.”
She was not prepared to cede the point that easily. Any point. “Cobras are indigenous to India,” she pointed out.
“They are.”
“And they do occasionally wiggle their way into houses.” Penelope folded her arms across her chest, daring him to contradict her.
He dared. “But they generally don’t bother to remove all the mosquito netting. That suggests a degree of premeditation that is beyond, er, Marmaduke’s powers.”
“I won’t have you slandering Marmaduke. He has excellent taste in victims.” Unlike some people, her tone implied.
“It’s not his taste I’m worried about. Let’s not beat about the bush, Penelope.” Her pulse gave a little jump at the intimacy of her name on his lips. Stupid pulse. Penelope scowled. Alex scowled right back, never giving an inch, not letting himself be deflected. “Who wants you dead?”
“You certainly do know how to flatter a lady. Can’t we just concentrate on my brilliant marksmanship? You never did compliment me on that shot, you know.”
It was not one of her more effective attempts to change the subject.
“I don’t want you dead,” he said shortly.
Penelope had received more fulsome comments in her time, but never one that had moved her more. She felt warm all over, despite the cooling sweat on her arms and chest. It was a warmth generated inside, not out. It was an entirely unfamiliar sensation. It made her very, very nervous.
“
Does that mean you want me alive?” Penelope said in the sultriest voice she could manage, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.
Alex just looked at her, waiting. Bloody single-minded man.
Bloody single-minded man who wanted to keep her alive. One could forgive a certain amount for that. There weren’t that many people in the world who cared whether her skin was intact or not.
But, then, this was Captain Reid, protector of the world, defender of treasonous siblings and small kittens. He would have done the same for the cobra.
Well, maybe not the cobra.
“Oh, all right, all right.” If he was determined to discuss the cobra, they would discuss the cobra. Penelope plonked herself down on the edge of the bed, feeling the mattress give around her. It wasn’t that she wanted to keep him there talking. Not in the slightest. She angled her head up at him. “We all know that you weren’t too keen on having me here, but I don’t think you’re trying to kill me—”
“Thank you.”
Ignoring him, Penelope went on ticking off people on her fingers. “—Henry Russell wasn’t too pleased when I turned down his overtures, but a little bit of rejection hardly rises to the level of snakebite.”
Alex didn’t rise to the bait. His mind was elsewhere, on politics, not dalliance. “You made an enemy of Mir Alam.”
“Nearly a month ago,” countered Penelope. “If he really were set on getting his own back, I doubt he would have waited that long. Revenge tastes better hot.”
“That’s debatable. Mir Alam waited several years before taking his revenge on some of his enemies here in the capital, and I don’t believe he enjoyed it any the less for the wait.”
“Even so,” said Penelope stubbornly. “I doubt that talking out of turn at a durbar is cause enough to elevate me to the top of his enemies list. I imagine I’m somewhere down near the bottom, somewhere below the man who trimmed his mustache too short.”
“That would be a capital offense,” agreed Alex, before adding, “What about Lord Frederick?”
Penelope squirmed slightly against the white coverlet. Something about the question gave her a decidedly queasy sensation, although she wasn’t sure whether it was the implication that her husband wanted her dead or simply the sound of his name on Alex’s lips. “What about him?” she asked belligerently. She didn’t want to talk about Freddy with Alex.
Alex sighed.
With an airiness she was far from feeling, she said, “Of course, you are ignoring the obvious solution, which is that the netting was just taken down for cleaning and the snake crawled in through the drainage sluice on his own scaly initiative.”
“He couldn’t fit through the drainage sluice.”
“The door, then. The window. This house is positively riddled with permeable passages.”
“You said it wasn’t a love match.”
Penelope balled her hands into fists in her lap. “If every marriage of convenience ended in murder, the graveyards of London would be packed to capacity. Freddy might not love me, but that’s no reason to murder me! I’m rather convenient for him, really.”
“How so?”
Penelope gave a bitter laugh. “He can dally all he likes without fear of consequences. It isn’t as though anyone else can force him into marriage.”
Damn, damn, damn. Penelope wished she could suck that betraying “else” right back into her mouth, but it was already too late for that. Alex was wearing his thoughtful expression again, looking at her as though he had just fit the last piece into a puzzle.
Desperate to refocus his attention, Penelope said hastily, “Freddy’s mistress, on the other hand, might justifiably desire to put a period to my existence. Does she speak English?”
If Alex was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Excellent English. And French, too. She was mistress to Guignon, among others.”
“Guignon,” repeated Penelope softly. “The man we chased to that tomb.”
“You mean the man I chased, while you followed,” Alex’s voice was mild, but there was something guarded behind it. At another time, Penelope might have pursued that, but she was preoccupied with something far more pressing. What if it wasn’t all rubbish? What if Alex was right, and the snake had been deliberately released into her room? She didn’t want to think that Freddy wanted to kill her, or even his mistress—although she couldn’t help but admire her initiative if the woman had tried—but there was someone who did have a far more powerful motive than piddling little affairs of the heart.
“It’s Fiske,” said Penelope with resolution, lifting her head an abruptness that made the bed wobble. “It’s Fiske who wants to kill me.”
Alex blinked. “Fiske? He seemed to be having a rather good time in your company earlier tonight. I don’t think murder was what was on his mind,” he added dryly.
“Until,” said Penelope, “I mentioned the Marigold.”
Even if a maddened French spy was trying to murder her, at least she had the satisfaction of doing what she might once have thought impossible: rendering Captain Reid completely and utterly speechless. She hadn’t even had to jump into a river to do it.
“I take it you know of him, too?” she said brightly. “I imagine that was why you were chasing Major Guignon up to that Frenchman’s tomb—not for his onion soup recipes.”
“Raymond’s Tomb,” Alex corrected numbly. “And Guignon was a pastry chef, not a cook. How in the devil do you know about the Marigold?”
Penelope let out a snort of repressed amusement. “This fearsome French military man was a pastry chef ? Oh Lord, whatever will they do next? Boot-blacks leading their engineers? Tailors sailing their ships?”
“Vive la Republique,” agreed Alex absently. “Why Fiske? How in the hell does he come into it? And how in the bloody hell do you know about the Marigold?”
Penelope regarded him with approval. There was nothing more annoying than miss-ish reservations about not cursing in front of a lady. “I have my sources,” she said airily. “And I know that your Guignon was expecting the arrival of a contact who would set certain plans into motion.”
Penelope briefly considered telling Alex about the note she had found and just as quickly discarded the idea. No point in raising unnecessary questions about how and where she had come upon it and why she hadn’t thought to bring it to his attention before. Of course, Penelope told herself self-righteously, that was when she hadn’t quite realized what it was. And how was she to know back then that Alex was to be trusted? It had all made perfect sense at the time.
Penelope looked up to find Alex staring at her as though she had grown a second head. “What are you?” he demanded dazedly.
Penelope positioned herself to best advantage, bosom forward, shoulders back, chin tilted. If he wanted to know, there it all was, on display.
“Exactly what I seem,” she drawled.
Alex regarded her thoughtfully, examining her face, as though taking her apart, feature by feature, until the mechanics were laid bare beneath.
“Somehow I doubt that,” he said, and Penelope had the sense that he was referring to more than just spies. But he didn’t pursue it further. “How—,” he began, and then broke off, shaking his head. “No. Scratch that. So there really is a Marigold, then?”
“Of course,” said Penelope with great conviction, exuding superiority even though the only authority she had for it was Henrietta’s letter, which she still hadn’t managed to find.
“I had heard rumors, but it seemed . . .”
“Too silly?” Penelope laughed at the expression on his face. “I know a Gentian, a Carnation, and a short-lived Calla Lily. Nothing is too silly. It’s all the notices in the paper. Ever since the success of that Scarlet Pimpernel fellow years and years ago, they all play up for the reviews, tossing flowers about in the hopes of getting into the illustrated papers. You’d be amazed what people will get up to.”
“Including your friend Fiske?” said Alex, bringing them doggedly back to the matter at hand.
&n
bsp; “Not my friend,” corrected Penelope. “Freddy’s. I had thought—well, no need to get into that, but let’s just say I had almost decided to absolve him, but his reaction to a casual little mention of marigolds was decidedly damning.”
“Casual?”
“Well, maybe not that casual,” Penelope admitted. “But I certainly got a reaction. He nearly toppled over.”
Alex looked frowningly at her. “Don’t you think a real Marigold—if there were one—would have better sense than to react so violently to the mention of his name?”
“In general, perhaps. But I caught him off guard,” said Penelope smugly. “He certainly didn’t expect anything of the kind from me. In Fiske’s eyes, I was nothing more than a . . . a walking set of bosoms. He certainly won’t make that mistake again.”
“That may not be a good thing,” murmured Alex, scrupulously avoiding staring at her chest. “You were probably safer when he thought of you, er, that way.”
Penelope brushed that aside, well away on her own train of thought. “It does all make sense, when you think about it. He decided to end the danger by ending me. But he couldn’t be seen murdering his best friend’s wife.”
“Of course not,” Alex said. “I could see where that would be difficult for him.”
“Not at all good ton,” agreed Penelope caustically. “So he had to find a way to eliminate me that would look like an accident. Hence, the snake.”
Penelope marveled at her own cleverness. It was a perfectly beautiful theory. Even the Pink Carnation couldn’t have done better.
Her stubborn companion, on the other hand, didn’t seem nearly as impressed. “Would he have had time?”
“Of course!” said Penelope. “He left the party at least a full hour before I did, maybe more. How long can it take to plant one little cobra?”
“Not so little,” said Alex soberly, his gaze flicking to the snake corpse still cluttering up a portion of Penelope’s bedroom floor.
The Betrayal of the Blood Lily Page 25
