Heart of the Tiger

by Lynn Kerstan

  But she felt numb, as always. Encased in ice. And deeply resentful because he was here. To deal with one Keynes monster, as she had resolved to do, was a nearly hopeless task. How could she possibly take on both the Devil’s sons?

  At the Chioscho, Beata’s word for their small cottage, Mira waited in the sitting room while her father was settled on his bed. Her gloved fingers stroked the black superfine coat she held. A Keynes’s coat, while a Keynes tended to her father.

  She could not bear his kindness.

  After a few minutes, Hari Singh came out of the bedroom carrying the wheeled chair. “I shall see this repaired. You will have it back in time to take Mr. Holcombe to meet with his friends this evening.”

  “Thank you,” she said, wanting to say more, unable to find the words. It had been so long since there was kindness like his, since there was someone she felt could be trusted. But she had no trust to give, especially to a man in league with her enemies. He left without the gratitude she owed him, and she added one more weight to the scale of debts she owed, debts she would likely never be able to repay. She carried them with her with every step she took.

  It was a long time, or so it seemed to her, before Michael Keynes emerged from her father’s room. “A remarkable man,” he said, taking his jacket and coat from her stiff fingers. “How long has he been like this?”

  The frank question startled her. Most people tiptoed around her father’s incapacity. “Nearly three years. He had a seizure—a brain attack, his physician calls it—and has regained only a little control of his body. His mind is unimpaired.”

  “A good mind. And a brave man. I admire him.”

  “You were able to communicate with my father?”

  “Not in a significant way. He seemed to want me to talk to him, so I did. The intelligence in his eyes was unmistakable. As was his courage.” He had propped a shoulder against the doorjamb and folded his arms. “Hari can be a great help to you, if you aren’t too proud to accept it.”

  Anger sent heat to her face. “You are insulting, sir.”

  “Being insulting is the least of my vices. But you appear to know me. I wonder how. The minute I walked into range, you looked at me as if I’d just crawled out of a termite mound. Why is that, Miss Holcombe?”

  She went cold. Fumbled for a way to deflect his question. “I could ask you the same thing, Lord . . . sir.” He did not seem a commoner, as she was, nor common in any way. She had always thought little of inherited rank, given that the likes of Beast Keynes was a duke. But Michael Keynes had the sort of confidence that bumped against arrogance and bounced off it again, as if he couldn’t be bothered with arrogance. “When first you came within sight of me—”

  “I couldn’t look away. I know. You seemed familiar, as if we’d met before. But that doesn’t seem likely. I remember the name, though. Holcombe.”

  “My uncle’s small estate bordered your family’s large one. I grew up close by, at Seacrest, which is on the coast. But I don’t recall meeting you.”

  “You wouldn’t have. I grew up in Scotland. The inconvenient members of the family were stored there to keep them out of the way. It seems my father, or perhaps my brother, has caused you difficulty. May I inquire how?”

  She all but summoned the will to dismiss him, but it slipped away before she could get hold of it. Why not go ahead and tell him? He could find out by other means. And really, there was little he could do to her that had not already been done.

  “You brother wishes to acquire our property,” she said, gazing at the wall just above his shoulder. “He has a claim on it, or so he insists, because of gambling debts owed him by my cousin. Robert went out to India several years ago, hoping to acquire the money to pay his debts, but we have not heard from him for a considerable time.”

  “How is it a cousin’s debts have put your own home at risk?”

  “It’s complicated. When my uncle died last year, his entailed estate in Kent went to his brother—my father—while his unentailed property in Somerset was willed to his late sister’s son, my cousin Robert. But straightaway, Tallant came in and looted both houses, seized the livestock, and filed claims for the land.”

  “Did he provide legal grounds for the claims? Did you demand them?”

  “If you ask that, you must not know your brother well. Who was to stop him? I cannot hire a solicitor to match the ones he employs.” She clasped her hands behind her back, they were shaking so. “I do not understand the law, Mr. Keynes, but I do recognize power. Tallant will get what he wants, one way or another.”

  A pause. “Has he threatened you?”

  “Of course. Frequently.” She oughtn’t to tell him so much. And yet, she could not seem to stop herself. “But first he made an offer. If we signed everything over to him without a fuss, he would permit us to live at Seacrest until my father’s death. After that, he would find employment for me in his household.”

  She had nearly accepted, God help her, so that her father could live out his days in the house where he’d been born. But she had been unable to summon the courage. “When I refused, he threatened to have my father declared incompetent, removed from my care, and placed in an asylum. We went into hiding for several months. Now we are here. From now on, he will have to deal with us publicly. And I shall fight him publicly, every step of the way.”

  Well. That was theatrical enough. She had neglected to stamp her foot, and she hadn’t cried because she couldn’t, but in every other way she had made a proper fool of herself. Her gaze slid from the wall to the polished wood floor. What had possessed her to say these things, and to this man of all men?

  “You will do better to keep away from him, Miss Holcombe. He’ll not be permitted to carry out his threats.”

  “Who will prevent him? You?”

  “Your skepticism is understandable. But to this extent, you may trust me. I will see to it you come to no harm.” He bowed. “Your servant, ma’am.”

  “But why?” she said as he turned to go. “Why would you wish to help me?”

  After a moment he looked back at her, his eyes somber. “There is a Hindu saying, difficult to translate. If you feed the tigress, she will not devour you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  But he left without saying anything more.

  Chapter 4

  “You there! Keynes!”

  Voices stilled as everyone in the gaming room looked first in the speaker’s direction, and from there to a table at the other side of the room.

  Michael, holding his best whist hand of the day, folded the cards and glanced over with resignation at the tall, tawny-haired man standing in the doorway. Damn and blast. Trouble had a thousand ways of tracking him down.

  Loose limbed as a cheetah, trouble sauntered into the room and stopped at the first table, where two piquet players were sitting. They leaned back in their chairs, jaws tight with apprehension. “Did you fail to hear me, Keynes? I’m waiting for a greeting. Then I want an apology.”

  “I heard. An apology for what?”

  “Any number of offenses. For one, you stole my horse.”

  A new figure appeared at the doorway. Beata Neri, regal in purple and gold, wore an expression of delight. Behind her, half a dozen wide-eyed females jockeyed for a good view of the scene.

  He owed Beata a scene, Michael had to concede. And who better to engage with than the fellow at the other side of the room, his hands splayed on a gaming table? He had to be got rid of anyway.

  “Borrowed your horse,” Michael corrected, putting down his cards and slowly rising. “I returned it.”

  “Six months later. And it was a different horse.”

  “A better one. Not that you would notice. Left to your own devices, you’d ride bareback on a pig.”

  People were milling into the gaming room now, lining the walls,
their eyes round as oranges. Beata stood in a circle of light cast by a wall sconce. It was still morning, but several rooms at her Palazzo, including this one, had been designed to create the effect of eternal midnight.

  “I could call you out for that,” came the inevitable challenge.

  Michael grinned. A heartbeat later, the point of his knife pierced the table between the forefinger and index finger of his antagonist’s hand.

  Two chairs crashed to the floor as the piquet players sped to safety.

  Alone at the table, the long blade still quivering between his fingers, the man chuckled. “Is that the best you can do?”

  “I don’t know.” Michael put steel in his voice. “Shall we try again? What part of you should I target?”

  Looking a trifle confused, the man pulled the knife from the table and backed toward the doorway. “While I have this,” he said, “what can you throw at me?”

  “What indeed?” Michael held out his arms. He was in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, with his jacket draped over the back of his chair. His hands were notably empty. “Unless I have another knife.”

  The man had reached the doorway. He moved aside as two ladies darted past him into the room, curiosity brazen on their faces. “Have you, then? And can you throw it before I—”

  A second blade, more slender than the first, whizzed by the man’s cheek and hit the wall a hair’s distance from his ear.

  A gasp went up from the watching crowd.

  “I take your point,” said the man after a tense moment. “So to speak. If you will excuse me now, I shall take m’self off to Tattersall’s and buy m’self a pig.”

  Ignoring the gossip swirling around him, Michael sat down, picked up his cards, and raised an eyebrow. “Gentlemen?”

  After a while, people ceased hoping he’d do something else outrageous and went back to where they’d come from. The stack of wafers in front of him grew larger. He kept an eye on the mantelpiece clock. Half an hour would do it, he had decided.

  His patience ran out in twenty minutes. Ten, actually, but he forced himself to wait, the way he forced himself to leave the table and the room without looking as if he had anywhere to go.

  The only exit took him through the Sala dei Medici, where Beata was poised with a knife in each of her hands. “Yours, I believe.”

  “Thank you.” Taking them, he bowed and would have moved on if she hadn’t planted herself in his path.

  “Put them away,” she said. “I wish to see where you conceal them.”

  “What fun would that be?” Dodging around her, he got halfway across the Sala before a footman loomed in front of him. Beata used hand signals, he had noticed, to give orders without speaking.

  “You would deny me?” she said plaintively. Flirtatiously.

  With a shrug, he turned. The dagger was already back in its sheath. With the larger knife, he was whittling on a fist-sized chunk of mahogany wood.

  Her eyes widened. “Clever wolf. Very well, then, keep your secrets. Except . . . where are you off to in such a hurry?”

  “Outside. Anywhere I can move.” He bowed. “You must pardon me. I cannot be penned in for any length of time.”

  “I thought you would wish to know,” she said with the air of a magician contemplating a wand, “that the Duke of Tallant has returned to London.”

  “Has he indeed.” He kept his breathing steady, his voice level. “Do you expect him here?”

  “From a Keynes, I expect only the unexpected. Will you go looking for him?”

  “Perhaps later. If he fails to come looking for me. Your servant, signora.”

  He heard her musical laugh as he departed, and for long time thereafter. He felt, sometimes, like an actor in a bad play who knew his role but not his lines, who could see how it all would end but had no idea what would happen next. There would be real weapons, though, in this drama. Real pain. Real blood.

  No stage-prop pig’s blood, which reminded him—

  After retrieving Hari Singh from the mews, where he had been working on some sort of mechanical device to support Mr. Holcombe’s right arm, Michael set off in the direction of the river and Cheyne Walk. As always, the two men drew the attention of passersby. Audiences everywhere, he reflected while giving Hari his instructions.

  When they had come in sight of their destination, a soft voice spoke to them from a narrow alleyway. “And what was that all about?”

  While Hari moved on ahead, Michael slipped into the alleyway. “Bloody fool. Where can we go?”

  “This way.”

  Shortly, in the darkest corner of a dark tavern, Michael settled at a scarred wood table across from Hugo Duran. “You can’t be seen with me,” he said. “That’s what it was about.”

  “All the time I’ve known you, I wasn’t supposed to know you. And I suppose that made a degree of sense in India. But why here? What have you done here?”

  “Nothing, yet.”

  A box-shaped man missing half his nose delivered two tankards of ale, pocketed the coin tossed him by Duran, and returned to the shadows.

  “I went looking for you when you disappeared,” Michael said, pulling out his knife and the piece of wood he had been carving. “Traced you to Alanabad, but you were already gone. There was some nonsense about a stolen icon and an emissary sent by the gods to seek for it in England.”

  “That would be me,” Duran said. “But the Nizam of Alanabad has no love for Englishmen. I’m surprised they told you anything. More surprised you got in and out in one piece.”

  “Nothing to it.” One broken arm, one bullet slicing off a quarter-inch of flesh near his waist, assorted cuts and bruises. It had not been one of his more graceful exits. At least he’d had the foresight to send Hari in at another time, from another direction. “I ran a diversion while Hari made friends with the locals. Did you find the icon?”

  “It’s a long story. Come to supper tonight and I’ll tell it with all proper flourishes. Besides, I want you to meet Jessica.” His expression softened. “My wife, who is carrying three-quarters of our first child.”

  Duran was the least likely man to wed that Michael had ever known . . . not counting himself. “You never listen,” he said. “No contact with me. None. Congratulations, and from now on, stay the hell away.”

  “We’re setting out for Sussex day after tomorrow.” Duran frowned. “I presume you’re going to warn me against your brother. Do you imagine I fear him?”

  “You should. I do. Not for myself, but he won’t go for me directly unless I force him to. He’ll go instead for my friends, for anyone he thinks I might value. Call attention to yourself, Duran, and he will look past you to your wife and child. There is no allowance for swaggering here, or for repaying old debts to me. You have obligations more compelling.”

  Duran’s gaze dropped from his face to the knife shaving at the wood. “What do you intend to do, then?”

  “Whatever is required. And there isn’t much time.” Which reminded him . . . “What do you know about the Earl of Varden?”

  “The Archangel? Not a great deal. I met him once at Beata’s. Come to think of it, he was in company with your brother. Others were there as well, stockholders of the East India Consortium, most of them reputable. As I recall, Varden was about to sail for India.”

  “He got there.” The fire inside Michael roared to life. With effort, he tamped it down again. His temper, Hari kept saying, would be the death of him . . . that and his lack of interest in staying alive. “Anything else?”

  “I can ask Jessica. She knows everyone. You have a problem with Varden?”

  “Something of the kind. He doesn’t like what I was doing to the Consortium’s country trade, and he sure as hell doesn’t like me. When Hari and I left, he was still gathering evidence against me, and I presume that when he gets here, he’ll tr
y to prosecute. Which means I have to finish with the Beast before the bloody Archangel flies in.”

  The plank table in front of him was littered with shavings. Whittling kept his hands busy, focused his energy. He’d done it since he could remember, shaving away bits of wood until there was nothing left of it. Then, a year or two ago and only to please Hari, he’d started trying to create recognizable shapes before using them for firewood. No point saving them. By necessity, he always traveled light.

  “When will that be?”

  Michael had lost track of the conversation. He went looking and found it again. “When he gets here. I’d counted on two months’ lead time, assuming Varden caught a trader shortly after I left India. Hari and I came the quickest way, through the Red Sea and across Egypt, but bandits attacked the caravan we’d joined. After we shook loose of them I went down with a bout of malaria, and later, we ran into bad weather on the Mediterranean. At this point I figure a month at best before he arrives, and probably half that time.”

  Duran took a drink of ale, winced, and set the tankard down again. “Foul stuff. Look. I’ll put my wife’s secretary to compiling a dossier on Varden. It will be thorough. Helena Pryce can track down a white feather in a snowstorm.”

  Michael had always valued information, and the slightest detail could be the one that gave him the edge. Besides, with Duran wanting to be of help, this was a way to get him off his back. “Very well, then, if it’s no trouble. Thank you. But have her send it to,”—he scrambled for a name—“ ‘John Blackstone’ in care of my banker, Charles Whitehead, at the Bank of England.”

  “If you say so.” Duran propped his elbows on the table. “I’m almost afraid to ask, considering your reputation, but there’s a young woman living at Beata’s, a Miss Miranda Holcombe. I was wondering if you had met her. Tallant has his sights on the Holcombe family, and he’s already stripped her father of his home and his inheritance.”

  “She told me. Some of it. The young lady gives little away.”