Mischief

by Laura Parker

  That voice! For the space of five heartbeats—in which she heard Bersham’s cry of, “Oh, my lady!”—Japonica wondered if he would try to kill them both. She did not doubt he was capable. Though he was feverish and trembling, the strength of his grip had not lost its power. Such outrage and pain in his expression! She could not say why she reached out to lay her hand against his cheek, whether she hoped to smooth away or blot out that terrible expression.

  He flinched at her touch but did not move away. “Nay. I would never seek to kill you,” she whispered. Her fingers slipped up over the contours of the deep scar at his brow. “No mortal can murder the Hind Div.”

  He jerked at her words. “You know!” It was at once a question and an acknowledgment.

  When he released her she did not move, could not look away from those black-fringed golden eyes. The Hind Div lived!

  Shivering, she closed her eyes and slid to the floor.

  Bersham was at her side at once, helping her rise to her feet. “Are you well, my lady?”

  “Yes, fine,” she murmured, but her gaze went back to the man on the bed. He had moved away, half turned his back and lifted his right arm to shield his face. That is when she noticed that no hand protruded from the right sleeve. Instead his arm ended in a stump covered by bloody bandages.

  “Dear Lord!” she gasped.

  “His lordship lost his hand in the war,” Bersham said matter-of-factly.

  Lord Sinclair shivered and then swung back toward the speaker, his arm just missing striking Japonica in the face. “Liar! You damned son of Satan.” He thrust his maimed arm toward Bersham, his eyes blazing with rage. He spoke in Persian. “You took it, scourge of hell! The price of my resistance! You cut it off!”

  Bersham skittered away from the venom in Lord Sinclair’s voice and expression. “What’s he saying, my lady?”

  Japonica shook her head. “He believes—nothing.” She could not say the words, that he thought they were his torturers.

  Perhaps his enemies had captured him, as the Resident of the East India Company told her. Yet he had escaped. And here he was, in London, before her. A true conjurer’s trick.

  When she did speak she was amazed by how calm she sounded. She held out her dagger to him, hilt first “You are safe. You have escaped. I seek only to ease your suffering. But you must trust me, burra sahib. Take this weapon if it will make you feel safe.”

  A spasm of emotion crossed his face, bringing into relief the long jagged scar etched like lightning across his brow. Then he very slowly reached out and touched her sleeve. “I do not think I have the strength left to deny you.” He turned his face away. “Do as you will.”

  She looked down to where the broken nails of his left hand had left thin trails of blood on her night rail. A thousand questions sprang to mind. What had happened to him after they parted that night more than a year ago? How had he come to be in England? Was he really the new viscount?

  Just as quickly, she realized what his reappearance might mean in her life. No, she could not think about that now. He had begun breathing heavily again, as if trying to prepare himself for more suffering. He was a man with a very thin grip on sanity.

  “What do we do, my lady?”

  She looked up, having forgotten that Bersham still hovered nearby. “We will continue.”

  Lord Sinclair did not stir this time as Bersham undressed him. She worked beside the butler without thinking about what would happen when her patient realized who she was. That would have to wait until he had recovered, if he recovered, his senses.

  This is the Hind Div! Her mind could not stop teasing that thought but she refused to indulge it.

  Moving quickly and efficiently, she slit the worn and frayed bandage that covered his wounded arm. Even steeled to the sight, she could not keep from gasping, “Dear Lord!” when she saw what lay beneath.

  From elbow to stump his arm was swollen with bruises old and new. The mostly healed scar at the end of the stump oozed fresh blood. It looked as if he had been pounding it against the wall or some other hard surface. He had asked her to stop the pain. Perhaps he had been trying to do the same. It was the kind of thing an animal might do, an instinctive senseless attempt to try to numb the torment But he had only made it worse. No wonder he was in agony. She would need to ease the swelling.

  She glanced toward the draped windows. “Is it still snowing?”

  “Most likely, my lady,” Bersham answered.

  “Then send someone into the street to fill a deep bowl. And I need linen for bandages, and fresh bedding. Hurry!”

  The familiar smell of incense awakened him. In the light of a single candle he saw her and smiled. She sat in a straight-backed chair, her head nodding forward as she slept. He could not see her face but the veil of tumbled pale red hair shielding her features was familiar.

  He had dreamed her, willed her here. Not often, but when the torment of his affliction became too much, she sometimes came to him.

  He did not try to reach out to her. She would never come near enough to touch. But he gazed at her, small and self-contained in the darkness, and was content with the knowledge that he did not deserve even this much.

  If only he could remember who she was!

  He did remember some things. They made him shudder. Horrifying remnants of the ephemera of his dreams.

  She stirred at his moan. He bit his lip, ashamed to have disturbed her. She would disappear now. Regret dragged at him, so many regrets.

  She stood up. Unlike the other times, she wore the black of mourning. His heart heaved in his chest. Had she come to tell him his life was ending?

  He watched in silence as she moved toward him, afraid another sound would burst this precious madness.

  Then she was leaning low over him, the cascade of her hair brushing his face. It was too much. A muscle spasmed in his cheek. The appalled push of tears brimmed in his eyes. He shut them briefly, hoping a blink would not cost him her vision. But she was still there, closer than ever before.

  “Are you in pain?”

  Pain? When she was here with him? There was nothing in him but this great swelling of gratitude.

  He felt in astonishment the touch of her hand, more real than his own breath in his lungs. His teeth began to chatter.

  “The fever’s broken. That is why you are cold.” She moved away, disappeared.

  He closed his eyes, disappointment so bitter he could taste it.

  “The fire is out,” he heard her say from a long distance.

  He could not believe it! She was climbing onto the bed beside him. He felt the warmth of her body as she pressed against his back and put an arm about his waist. “Is that better?”

  Better than any feeling ever before in his life. But he could not say a word. The darkness was stealing over him. If this were death, he was content.

  He reached out and touched the hand she had placed on his heart, murmuring, “Alhamdolillah valmenah.”

  Chapter Ten

  Alyssum turned this way and that before the mirror, the better to see her face framed in a green silk bonnet with a large black velvet bow perched on the brim. “Is it not exquisite?”

  “Fetching. A pity it does not flatter you,” Laurel replied.

  Alyssum’s smile drooped. “What do you mean?”

  “Very well, if you must have honesty. It looks like an overturned bucket on your head. You’ve not the countenance for it. Your features are too delicate. Now I have the chin and cheeks to balance the brim.”

  “You have cheeks and chins enough to balance an overturned barouche.” Cynara puffed out her cheeks for emphasis.

  “Oh, do be quiet” Laurel turned to the modiste who was supervising the fit of her new military blue spencer. “I quite detest children who fidget and fuss. As if they have any pretense to fashion! I cannot think why they were not left at home.”

  Japonica ignored this snipe at her decision to bring all the Shrewsbury s
isters shopping on Oxford Street. After three wretched days under the same roof with Lord Sinclair, she felt as if she would burst if she did not get away.

  She tried to keep her mind occupied by overseeing the sorting out of the Shrewsbury townhouse, which appeared not to have been properly cleaned in several decades. The moldy pile was not suitable for human habitation, a fact that seemed to disturb no one but her. So then, she instructed the caretakers to hire a dozen servants to help in the cleaning. As with the beginning of all such projects, the clutter and grime increased with their efforts. Dust and soot and cobwebs now filled the air. To escape the clutter she had suggested this shopping trip. It was also a chance to escape the possibility that at any moment she might turn a corner and run into Lord Sinclair.

  The Hind Div was not dead! He was in London, beneath the very roof she shared. A changed man, surely, but one who would sooner or later remember when and how and where they first met. As if their last meeting were not embarrassment enough!

  Japonica shuddered a little every time she thought of it Bersham had found her the next morning, asleep in his lordship’s bed! She had not meant to nod off, only to warm the man until he stopped shivering. But the night was very cold and the room so very dark and it seemed so natural ….

  Japonica turned quickly to look out of the shop window, hoping none of the others would notice her blush.

  Jamie’s father was alive! But he must never know it.

  That thought kept her so tied in knots she could barely keep her wits together these last days. The fact that Lord Sinclair had issued orders banning everyone but Bersham from the sickroom did not ease her dilemma. Sooner or later, he would remember her and then she would have to face him. Unless she left London at once!

  She was not quite so craven. But she did not have the nerve to return to the sickroom.

  The Shrewsbury sisters, too, seemed under Lord Sinclair’s influence. His unseen but daunting presence fostered a marked decline in their quarreling. Unfortunately, freed from Lord Sinclair’s proximity, today they had reverted to old habits.

  “What do you think, M-m-miss?” Peony had settled upon calling her step-mama “Miss” while her sisters went out of their way to avoid addressing her in any form. The child pirouetted before her in a high-waisted dress of palest pink with a blue ribbon under the bosom.

  “It becomes you,” Japonica said. “But you must scrub your neck before you wear it.”

  “Yes, you’ve got turnips growing in your ears and lice swinging from your curls,” Cynara taunted.

  “Have not!” Peony’s lower lip began to tremble. “At least I don’t have p-p-pimples the size of b-b-boils all over my face!”

  “Brat!”

  “Currant f-f-face!”

  “Girls!” Japonica said sharply. She put a hand to her brow, aware of a vague throbbing there. She had promised not to interpose herself in the sisters’ lives, no matter what they did and said. But two hours of shopping with them made her wish she had stayed behind to beat rugs. “I think it is time we collect our purchases and go.”

  Madame Soti, whose shop it was, chose this moment to intervene in this unhappy picture of aristocratic family life. “Je suis pret! I have saved the best for the last.” She clapped her hands and two assistants appeared carrying a ball gown from behind the curtain that hid the workroom. “Enfin! My latest creation!”

  It was a gown of India muslin, the weave so silky fine it drifted and draped on the breeze as the assistants swung it around to show off its lines. Gold lace edged the very low-cut bodice and short sleeves of the high-waisted frock. The skirt, worked with gilt spangles in the form of tiny sprigs, sported a gold beaded border of classic design with bouquets tied with ribbons. White ribbon and more spangles decorated the hem. A separate train of similar design fell from the shoulders.

  “Oh, that’s exactly what I want!” Laurel exclaimed, reaching for it.

  “This is perhaps un peu vieux for the mademoiselle Abbott,” the modiste suggested with a slight smile.

  “She means you’re too fat for it,” Cynara stuck in.

  “Scarecrow!” Laurel taunted.

  Hyacinthe gave an impatient sniff. “Madame Soti says the gown is meant for someone more mature.”

  “It is for the married lady.” The modiste aimed a knowing smile at Japonica. “Cela fait beaucoup, mais non?”

  With great reluctance Laurel released her grasp on the gown.

  The modiste’s dark eyes moved back to the new dowager viscountess. She had heard rumors of the great mesalliance between the foreign commoner and the elderly viscount Shrewsbury but none of her ton-rash clientele had so much as caught sight of the bride before now. What luck! The viscountess chose her shop in which to do business. Not only did she stand to make a handsome sum from dressing six ladies, but once word circulated that she had spoken with the mysterious stranger, her business would pick up considerably as London’s gossips came to glean what information she had firsthand. But first she must make the proper impression on her new patroness so that the association might continue.

  Though the new viscountess was dressed unfashionably in brown serge and her hair was nothing short of a fright, there was the distinct air of the lady about her; a gentility to her movements. It only needed teasing out. She swung the dress around for Japonica’s view. “Is it not beautiful? So elegant! Fit only for the most perfect of forms. Perhaps Lady Abbott would care to demonstrate?”

  “I?” Japonica said in faint surprise. “Oh no, I have no use for such a fine gown.”

  The modiste lifted one brow. “No use? But soon begins the London Season. You will have every need for half a dozen such gowns within a fortnight.”

  “I shan’t be …. I shan’t be so promoted,” Japonica finished with a blush. She had almost blundered by saying she would not long be in London. She did not want to risk her tenuous authority over the sisters by reminding them that it would be brief. “I am a stranger, after all.”

  “Au contraire! A new face in town? A young widow of means with the hair rouquin? Madame will be favorite, mais oui!”

  “Oh, Miss, why don’t you t-t-try it on?” Peony encouraged.

  “Yes, dear step-mama, why don’t you?” Laurel cooed. There was nothing she would like better than a chance to make fun of her unwanted step-parent. An ill-worn ball gown would quickly show her up for the interloper she was.

  “Well, I don’t…” Japonica looked to the modiste for encouragement. “Shall I?”

  Madame Soti and her girls nodded and clapped their approval.

  She needed no more urging. She could not remember the last time she had had a new gown. And a ball gown made by a London modiste? Never!

  Once in a private fitting room, Madame Soti helped her strip to stockings and chemise.

  Rubbing the fabric of her client’s serviceable undergarment between her fingers, the modiste clucked her tongue and said, “Off with it! We must begin with the skin!”

  Several embarrassing minutes passed during which Japonica stood naked until she was dressed in new silk stockings with a blush of color in them held up by beribboned garters with rosettes. A short silk chemise, so sheer she could see the shadow of her form through it, barely covered the essentials.

  Madame Soti prowled around her as she stood on a raised platform, one hand cupping an elbow while the other cupped her chin. “We shall need only the lightest corset, and no padding for the breasts.” As the helper went for the garment the modiste smiled and patted Japonica’s stomach. “Madam is to be congratulated on so quickly regaining her form after l’enfant.”

  Japonica turned scarlet. “I—I …”

  Madame Soti put a hand on her shoulder. “Ah, I am so clumsy. It must be my imagination. But I am old and wise enough to admit my mistakes.”

  Japonica stared into the woman’s face searching for signs of duplicity. She saw only sincerity. “It is a very delicate and complicated matter, Madame Soti.”

 
; “Everyone in London has life matters both complex and delicate. A ladies’ modiste hears many things and keeps silent that she may be worthy of a loyal patronage.”

  Japonica bit her lip but said nothing else. She had no choice but to accept the woman’s word for her discretion.

  As she was being laced up, Japonica cursed her own vanity. It had not occurred to her that her body would give away her secret. If she had not wanted to try on the gown, her secret would remain her own. Now it was given to one with no reason to respect her privacy. She thought of offering the modiste a bribe but dismissed it. She might feel insulted after she had given her word. If she were not a woman of her word a few pounds would not mend her character.

  When the gown had been lifted over her head and fastened up, she no longer cared what she looked like. “It is very nice,” she said dryly without even a glance at the cheval glass. “But not for me.”

  “But madam must show her stepdaughters, surely, the lesson.”

  “Of course.” She had quite forgotten the reason she had been persuaded to try on the gown in the first place. She stepped off the platform.

  “But wait!” the modiste commanded and had an assistant place a pair of gold leather slippers before her. She clapped her hands and two other assistants hurried in with hairpins and a hot comb. Before Japonica could protest her hair was unpinned, rearranged, and caught up in a paste diamond diadem at her crown. Still another assistant brought out a pair of gold elbow-length gloves and slipped them up her arms. She had never in her life touched a rouge pot but said nothing as the modiste rubbed the sheer gloss across her cheeks and lips. The modiste might be a servant to the English aristocracy but within her own shop she was the general, martinet, and queen of all she surveyed.

  As she worked on her newest client, Madame Soti began to compose in her mind the judgment she would repeat for certain privileged customers who would come into her shop in the subsequent days. “The viscountess is a natural for the fashions I alone can create for her. Slight of stature, oui. But such lovely shoulders and a bosom to put every young girl to her knees in prayer each night. In my hands, she blossoms! Blossoms! And a widow, so young! One senses this must be but a temporary tragedy. For who can resist russet curls to put the fox to shame?”