by Lynn Kerstan
But he had seen, with those too-familiar eyes, past her self-justification, even beyond her very real guilt and her yearning for absolution. He had seen the despair in her.
For that, she resented him beyond measure. And was grateful to him, for he had prevented her from doing the unthinkable. Absorbed in her misery, she’d condemned her father, helpless and beloved, to the anguish of mourning his child even as he confronted his own lingering death.
The irony of her situation was bitter in her mouth. Caring for her father and killing the duke had been all she permitted herself to want from life. But willy-nilly, one goal had been achieved without her, and the other would be taken from her hands within a few months.
What was she to do? She had made herself a suspect and encouraged the authorities to believe her guilty. Now her only escape was to accept one of the choices Michael Keynes had ticked off like a shopping list.
She could condemn a man who might or might not be guilty—she still wasn’t sure—to execution for a murder she had wanted to commit.
Or she could flee with a dying father from bolt-hole to bolt-hole, the authorities hard on her heels.
Which left marriage to a man she feared.
Three options that gave her no choice at all. Whatever Michael Keynes said, it was not given her to ordain his death. Nor could she subject her father to hardship because she feared to suffer. Like Sisyphus, she could only go to the boulder and put her awful hands on it and with all the will she possessed, begin pushing it once again up a steep and futile mountain.
How very theatrical, a mocking voice said from the small corner of herself not given over to self-pity. If you feel badly about your fate, consider the unfortunate man who will be saddled with you. It might be kinder to send him to his death.
She became aware of her arms wrapped around her waist, of the red-gold light cast by an oil lamp and a pair of braziers, of a moist fragrance in the air. Without realizing it, she had come into her father’s room.
She moved quietly to where he slept, half sitting against a bank of pillow on a narrow bed, and lowered herself to a chair beside him. To help clear his congested lungs, a healer among the Punjabi women had mixed oils and spices in copper bowls and placed them on the braziers. The room smelled of mint and lemon, cloves and half-a-dozen elusive scents. It smelled of the oils and spices used to anoint the dead. She glanced up and saw her father looking back at her, a question in his pale blue eyes.
“Oh, Papa,” she said, wanting to ask him what to do and reluctant to lay her burdens on him. He liked it when she stroked his head, and for several minutes, she simply sat with him and let him feel her touch. But as the time passed, she sensed in him a growing agitation, as if he required more from her.
He always knew when she ached inside. She wished he did not, so that he could be spared her problems. But perhaps she cheated him by withholding them. In his place, she would demand to know everything. To share everything. What if he wanted that as well?
He hadn’t used to. After her mother’s death, he dove like a fishing bird into the past, into the history of ancient civilizations and troubles too long ago and far away to touch him. He still did that, she knew. What else was there for him now?
Except her. He cared about her and what he thought his illness had cost her, and worried what would become of her when he was gone.
If ever she was to open her heart to him, the little of it there was, she must find the courage to do it soon. “Papa,” she began, with a smile so he would not fear bad news. “Michael Keynes has asked me to marry him. I scarcely know what to think of it. Now that he’s a duke, he should be looking higher for a wife, and more to the point, I have never wished to be a wife. But he cares nothing for that, and he is in a great hurry besides. Ought I to wed him, do you think?”
Instead of the enthusiastic “Yes” she had expected, he used his finger to ask for the alphabet card. With a degree of reluctance, she brought it to him, added pillows at his back to raise him up, and positioned his hand. “No fr me,” he picked out.
Not for me. The shorthand they had developed spared his strength. “Of course not, although he is fond of you, I’m sure. All is in disarray after his brother’s death, and people expect he will carry on where the former duke left off. I think he wants a wife to lend him respectability, and I am conveniently to hand. It would be purely a marriage of convenience.”
“Lov?”
“No love at all, but how could there be? We hardly know each other. I thought you would be pleased, Papa. You have always wanted me to find a husband.”
“Gd man.”
“Well, yes, I would prefer a good man, but—”
The finger moved again. “He gd.”
“Oh. I misunderstood you. In many ways, I expect he is good. Vastly difficult, though, and autocratic. And as you know, I am used to making my own decisions.”
“Stbrn.”
“Which of us do you mean?” She was relieved to see the gleam of humor in his eyes. “Papa, I may decide to accept him. Not for your sake, and not for love, and not for any reason I can put my finger on, except that I can see no great harm in it. First, though, I must discover if we can come to terms on a number of things. If the negotiation goes well, then perhaps—and only perhaps—I shall consent to become a duchess.”
A long pause. Then he wrote, “B wis.”
She wasn’t sure if he meant she ought to marry the duke, or if he was urging her to think carefully before doing so. “Be wise,” he had said. Too late. She had made so many bad decisions that no matter which direction she turned now, a trap waited to close on her.
“I’d better go speak with him before he goes to b—before it’s too late.” The image of Michael Keynes in bed had sent heat roaring to her face and neck. Moving from her father’s line of vision, she removed a few pillows, helped settle him down, and slipped the card off his lap. “This may take a long time, and probably nothing will be settled tonight. I shall come first thing tomorrow and tell you all that occurred. Sleep well, Papa.”
Still unable to face him, she went to the door and paused there, careful to remain in the shadows. “Because you are my father,” she said, finding it extraordinarily difficult to speak of her feelings, “I have always been loved. And although I have been neglectful in telling you so, I love you as well, Papa. I very much love you.”
He could not respond, of course. She waited a few moments longer, as if listening to him speak without words, as she knew he was doing. Then, with a respectful curtsy, she withdrew.
Her bedchamber lay directly across the corridor. She went there first, to splash cold water on her face, pass a brush through her hair, and rummage through her half-unpacked luggage for combs to hold it back from her face. She found something else as well, something she thought had been taken from her at the cottage. Wearing fresh gloves and not as apprehensive as she probably ought to be, she set out for the room at the opposite corner of the house.
It was well after midnight. He might be gone by now. She wasn’t sure whether or not she wanted him to be there, but she knew that if this failed to be settled straightaway, she would lose her courage altogether. And then she’d end up doing whatever he wished, because the fight in her had already begun to seep away.
When she opened the door, near darkness met her eyes. Only two colsa lamps still burned on the pier tables, making small islands of golden light on either side of her. The fire had dwindled to coals. A chill was on the room.
The bench where he had sat was empty, the brandy bottle on the table beside it nearly so, but the familiar vibration assured her of his presence. And then she found him, a tall figure slouched against the wall in the far corner, a glass dangling from his fingers. He’d removed the embroidered robe and loosened the drawstring ties on his tunic, exposing his neck and a vee of muscled chest. Clearly he had not been expecting h
er to return, nor had he noticed that she had done so. She was so often in and out of her sleeping father’s room that she had learned to move silently as a wraith.
Already the door was closed behind her. To get his attention, she deliberately raised the latch and dropped it again.
He looked up.
From clear across the large room, she felt him the way she might if he were hovering directly over her. Hands clasped at her back, she leaned against the door for support and chose an opening move he would not be expecting. “Why do they call you Shear?”
A hesitation. He must be surprised she was there at all. “When I first went to the Punjab,” he said as if he found the subject tedious, “I attached myself to a troop of Ranjit Singh’s cavalry. Sikh men all have the same surname, you’ll have observed, but not because they are of the same family. The guru who established their faith had no use for caste, so the men all got rid of the surnames that marked the caste they’d been born into and took instead the name ‘Singh.’ It means ‘lion.’”
His voice was a little slurred. “The women all have a middle name, ‘Kaur,’ which means ‘princess.’ You should ask them to explain their beliefs to you. Theirs is an egalitarian society, far more so than our own, with virtually no distinction between men and women in rights and privileges. You would like that, I expect.”
He’d neatly turned the subject, no more willing to answer a personal question than she ever was. So she asked it again. “Why Shear? What does it mean?”
A sound that might have been a laugh. “I was new and green, had done something spectacularly stupid in an effort to prove myself, and when it worked out well, the others welcomed me into the troop with a Punjabi name. But I couldn’t be a lion, not in a regiment of Singhs, so they dubbed me Syr.”
“Which means?”
A long pause. “Tiger.”
Why had he been so loath to reveal it? She’d begun to expect something quite different. “Jackal,” perhaps. Or “rat.” He emerged from the dark corner, but only to take up the bottle and pour the last of the brandy into his glass.
“You drink too much,” she said.
“I know.” He lifted the glass in a toast. “But it’s never enough.”
It must have been defiance, she was thinking when he swallowed every last bit of the brandy in a single draught. Well, she oughtn’t have criticized him. Not when she had set out to win concessions from him. Although . . . he might be drunk enough to grant them, and too drunk to remember in the morning what he’d promised the night before.
“I fail to understand,” she said, “why you have proposed that we marry. If the authorities decide to prosecute me, how will my being married to you stop them? What is there in our marriage to protect either of us?”
“I am always protected, Miss Holcombe, if I choose to fight the charges. Rank, they say, has privileges, and one of mine is to be tried by my peers in the Lords. That right devolves as well upon my wife.”
“But you, or I, can be as easily condemned there as in a common court.”
“Not easily, I assure you. The lords are notably reluctant to sit in judgment of one of their own. The precedent makes them vulnerable, especially those with dirty hands, and their best safety lies in protecting one another. To be sure, Jermyn was unpopular and a severe embarrassment. Under ordinary circumstances, they would be delighted to see the last Tallant duke strung up and the title gone into abeyance. But these are not ordinary circumstances, and the last Tallant duke happens to be me.”
“You are not unpopular and an embarrassment?”
“I expect I will be, soon enough. What I am now is a threat. A good many of my potential judges are heavily invested in the India country trade, particularly the opium-for-tea smuggling that so enriched my brother. In that, of course, they are scarcely unique. But even those not directly involved turn a blind eye to the fraud, evasion of taxes, exploitation, bribery, extortion, and far greater crimes perpetrated by hirelings so that they and their fellows can reap a grand harvest.”
“Are you saying you have evidence against them? And that you would use it to prevent being tried for your brother’s murder?”
“Yes to both, assuming—as I said before—that I choose to fight the charge. In this one way, Jermyn has proved useful to me. For the last dozen years I have been tracing his private activities and those of the shells he used as covers, including the East India Consortium. In general, I cared nothing for anyone else’s crimes, but when Varden targeted me for investigation, I cast a wider net. Some little of what I hauled in, I carried here with me, and my associates were delegated to pursue the inquiries after my departure. They have already sent a deluge of damning information, which is now in the safekeeping of my banker. Long before I can be brought to trial, Miss Holcombe, I’ll have incontrovertible evidence against a score of my putative judges. They will not, I assure you, allow that evidence to be brought to light.”
She was afraid to ask. “And Varden himself?”
“So far as I know, innocent as a gamboling lamb. He might ought to have known what the Consortium was up to, but practically speaking, the information was not accessible to him. Nor to most of the investors, I expect, although Jermyn cannot have orchestrated all their activities on his own. If I elect to, I can probably ferret out the principals. But this is nothing to the point. Have I answered your question?”
She’d all but forgot what it was. Every time she spoke with this man, she discovered unexpected qualities, good and bad, in him. Tonight she had learned that to get what he wanted, he would ruthlessly manipulate the courts and the law, blackmail his peers, and if it suited him, protect a murderer. She was rather more impressed than appalled.
“Fairly well,” she rallied herself to say. “But what if I was brought to trial and took advantage of the opportunity to confess?”
He chuckled, no humor in the sound of it. “Do you imagine, my dear, that you would be permitted to speak for yourself in an English court? Your legal identity is absorbed into that of your husband. And were you to blurt out a troublesome admission, I should be forced to acknowledge that my brother’s persecution and your father’s illness had unsettled your fragile female mind. In their kindness, the lords would undoubtedly permit me to confine my demented duchess where she could do no one, not even herself, any harm.”
“I think you would really say that,” she said with a degree of furious awe.
“Let us agree, then, that you will not put me to it.”
One by one, he closed off every means of escape . . . not that she had anywhere left to go. Swallowing her indignation, she turned her mind to practical considerations. “What happens after my father is no longer a factor? Or if someone else is convicted of the murder? I presume we could then secure an annulment of the marriage?”
“I’m afraid not.” He went to the hearth, selected a log, and placed it across the firedogs. “The magistrate already thinks we conspired to commit the murder and protect each other from the consequences. Our marriage will be regarded with suspicion, and all the legalities checked down to the last jot and tittle. There are surprisingly few causes that can trigger an annulment. We’d not get away with faking any one of them.”
“We wouldn’t need to.” A cold knot of pain tightened in her stomach. “Many years ago, I was badly injured in a riding accident. Later, I overheard the doctor say it was unlikely I’d be able to bear children. So you see, I could confess I had deceived you before the wedding. No one would expect you to remain married to a woman unable to give you an heir.”
He had hunkered down and was placing tinder on the coals to get the fire restarted. “Are you certain of this, Miss Holcombe? If you make such a claim, you will be subjected to an unpleasant examination, and only a severe deformity would stand as evidence of infertility.”
She wondered what a severe deformity would consist of, and how it co
uld be detected. But she could hardly ask him straight out. “I see. Or rather, I don’t quite see. You appear to know a great deal about these matters.”
“Only because I have spent the better part of the day with my solicitors. I took the opportunity to ask them every pertinent question I could think of, along with those I anticipated receiving from you.”
“But are you not concerned about my deformities, detectable or otherwise? You have a responsibility to your name and family, sir. You are expected to continue the line.”
“I am? By whom? Although I am unacquainted with Norah’s daughters, I’d guess they are decent chits who keep themselves out of trouble. Well, if you except Corinna’s attempt to kill her father. But there hasn’t been a shred of decency in any Keynes male for the last several generations. I have no wish to reproduce myself, Miss Holcombe. The sooner this line dies out, the better.”
“Then you should not object to helping me annul our marriage. In the spirit of cooperation, sir, I will go first. But if the physical examination discloses nothing of use, then we’ll just have to resort to you. I mean, you could . . . that is, what would it cost you to swear that you are . . . um, incapable of—”
“No.”
She lifted her chin, undaunted. “I quite see how you would find such an admission difficult to make. But it’s not as if the information would become public. And later, with me gone and unfindable, you could have a miraculous restoration of your powers.”
“And you, Miss Holcombe, have a somewhat limited comprehension of male reproductive functions and the law. Even were I willing to swear myself impotent, the word of a Keynes already suspected of duplicity would scarcely hold up in the ecclesiastical court. Any examiner worth his credentials would put you in a room with me and instruct you to remove your clothing. In a remarkably short time, I assure you, all doubts about my capacity to perform would be extinguished.”
Having nursed her father over a period of years, she was not unfamiliar with male reproductive organs. Nor, having observed horses and other farm animals in rampant display, was she unacquainted with the transformation wrought by instinct and, she assumed, passion. She quite understood, generally speaking, what this formidable male had just described to her. She altogether grasped the reality of it and the pain that it would cause in her, and her own terror of the whole . . . procedure.
