Silk and Shadows

by Mary Jo Putney

  Mikahl shook his head. "They are your family, and you know them best. Now come." He pulled her to her feet. "Ring for someone else to stay with him. You are going to change into a gown that isn't bloodstained. Then I'm going to take you downstairs and stand over you while you eat. I don't want you becoming ill, too."

  "That won't be necessary. Now that the doctor has seen Ross, I can tear myself away for half an hour. But I'll be back to stay with him for the rest of the night." Her glance at her husband held a hint of challenge.

  "I'd be surprised if you didn't." Mikahl's face tightened as he looked at Ross's still unconscious form. "But Sara, I don't think I can bear to stay all night with you."

  "I don't expect you to, my dear, nor would Ross expect it. He's no better at sitting still than you are."

  Her husband pulled her into a hug, his large hands kneading the tense knots out of her neck and shoulders. "You are a very understanding woman."

  Jenny came to sit with Ross while Sara and her husband ate a simple supper. Than Sara returned to her quiet vigil.

  * * *

  Earlier in the day, Peregrine had ridden into the Downs with a spare horse, wrapped Kane's body in a blanket, then brought it back to Sulgrave and stored it in a little used outbuilding. After darkness fell, he transferred the corpse to a nondescript cart that was used for rough work around the estate.

  Dressed as unmemorably as the cart, Peregrine took his time driving into London, not wanting to reach Mayfair until after midnight. His mission to dispose of Kane's body went without complication. Another move had been made in the lethal game between him and Weldon. And during the hours of driving, he planned what to do next.

  * * *

  Sara was glad when Ross began tossing and turning restlessly. He did not seem feverish, and his increased activity was less alarming than his death-like unconsciousness had been. She managed to get some beef broth down him, laced with a little laudanum to reduce the pain.

  She dozed off herself for a time, then awoke with a start when she heard a faint voice saying, "Sally?"

  Ross had sometimes called her that when they were children. Glad that he was conscious, she leaned over the bed. "How are you feeling?"

  He blinked to bring her into focus. "Like hell, if you'll excuse the language." His voice was barely audible.

  "You're excused."

  He raised his right hand uncertainly toward his bandaged left shoulder. "My mind seems to have been dipped in molasses."

  "Better leave the bandage alone." Sara caught his wandering hand. "You've had some laudanum, which is why you feel fuzzy. Do you remember what happened?"

  "I was riding with Mikahl in the Downs." Ross frowned. "Was he hurt?"

  "He's fine," she assured him. "The same bullet that hit you grazed his horse, but Mikahl wasn't touched. He bandaged you up and brought you back to Sulgrave."

  "Glad he's all right." Ross's fingers moved restlessly in Sara's grasp. "If Weldon had sent two assassins instead of one, I suppose we'd both be dead."

  "Weldon?" Sara said, startled. She was about to say that Ross had been accidentally shot by a poacher when her cousin's rambling voice cut her off.

  "Ironic. Just before I was shot, Peregrine said it was dangerous to be riding in such an exposed place. But he thought Weldon wouldn't try to kill him yet." Ross pulled his hand free and rubbed at his forehead, trying to clear his mind. "I think the sniper was aiming at Mikahl, not me. I saw the rifle and tried to push Mikahl out of the way and got in front of the bullet myself. Bloody stupid thing to do."

  Sara felt as if her heart had stopped. Carefully she said, "You and Mikahl are sure that Charles Weldon is behind this?"

  "Of course. Weldon wanted to strike before Mikahl could kill him first." Then Ross's gaze sharpened. "Damnation. You don't know any of that, do you?"

  "No, but you are going to tell me everything, Ross," Sara said grimly. "What has been going on?"

  "Mikahl hasn't wanted to tell you," her cousin said uncertainly. "He didn't want to worry you."

  "My husband has made an error in judgment," she said, her voice clipped with anger, "and you are about to rectify it."

  Perhaps if Ross had not been feeling the effects of laudanum, he would have resisted. Instead, he ran his fingers through his hair. "I've thought he should tell you. How much do you know now?"

  Sara thought a moment. There had been much fire and brimstone, but what had her husband actually said? "I know that Charles and Mikahl hate each other. Mikahl said that Charles is evil, and that he may have killed his first wife by pushing her down the stairs. Once you told me that Charles might be involved in illicit activities, but it seemed so improbable that I didn't really believe it. Is all that really true?"

  Ross sighed, and began a flat litany that turned Sara's blood cold: that Charles Weldon did indeed own gaming hells and whorehouses, including the one that had enslaved Jenny Miller; that he was part owner of illegal slave ships; that he casually gave orders that ruined lives. And that Sara's husband was determined to destroy him.

  Her cousin's words painted a picture that made horrible sense, though there were still huge holes. Why Mikahl hated Charles so much, for example, and just what he was doing to bring his enemy low. Sara felt like a child who had been living in a prettily decorated tent, only to have the canvas walls suddenly drop to reveal monsters in every direction.

  She had thought she and her husband were building a marriage and a life together. Instead she found herself on the sidelines of an impending tragedy that she didn't understand.

  "Ross, do you have any idea what Mikahl is planning?" she asked, keeping her voice level so as not to disturb him.

  "Don't know," he said tiredly. After a moment, he added, "Once I came into his study, and found him looking at some papers that he shoved into a concealed drawer in his desk. Maybe there's something there. Maybe not."

  "I'll take a look," Sara said.

  Ross was gray with fatigue, but he was not yet ready for sleep. "You won't do something foolish, will you?"

  "No. I just want to understand what is happening." Sara's brow furrowed with thought. "Will you mind if I call the housekeeper to sit with you now? She said she'd relieve me if I wanted to go to bed."

  Her cousin looked indignant. "Don't need anyone here."

  "Well, I need someone to be here even if you don't." She leaned over and kissed his forehead. "Get some sleep now, my dear. Everything will be all right."

  Yet even as she gave the automatic reassurance, she didn't believe it. Sara was not sure things would ever be all right again. She waited until Ross fell asleep, then rang for the housekeeper, Mrs. Adams. After she was relieved of her duty, Sara went down to the study. There were several standard types of concealed drawers, and it did not take long to locate and open the one in Mikahl's desk. Then, her face like granite, she took her husband's secret files upstairs to read.

  * * *

  It was about three in the morning when Peregrine quietly let himself back into his house. He stopped to look in on Ross and was surprised to see that Sara had been replaced. Presuming that meant that his friend was doing well, he moved on without disturbing Mrs. Adams, who was drowsing in a chair.

  He had thought Sara would be asleep, but she was not. Instead she was curled up in a wing chair, wearing a flowing blue velvet robe and with her dark gold hair loose over her shoulders. When he entered, she laid the paper she was reading on a pile in her lap and looked up. In the soft lamplight, her face was not that of a sibyl, but the goddess Nemesis herself.

  He paused in the doorway, warning alarms going off in his head, before entering the room and closing the door behind him. "I assume that Ross is improving, or you would still be with him."

  "Ross is definitely better," Sara said in a steely voice. "He was able to speak quite coherently. And because of the laudanum, he told me some very interesting things." She held up the sheaf of papers. "Would you care to explain just what you are doing to Charles Weldon, and why?"

&n
bsp; He raised his brows in mock surprise. "I see that the honorable Lady Sara has been going through my private papers. I would not have expected it of you."

  "Don't try to change the subject! If my standards of honesty are declining, it is probably because of contact with you," his wife said, her voice tight. "Just what the devil have you been doing? And how many people are you injuring in the process of trying to bring Charles down?"

  "I am doing nothing to Weldon that he does not deserve," Peregrine said calmly.

  Sara's brown eyes flashed. "What gives you the right to be judge, jury, and executioner, Mikahl?"

  "You are too civilized, Sara," he retorted. "Anything that is moral for the law is equally moral for an individual—just as a wrong act is not made right because a government commits it instead of an individual."

  "I'm not interested in your sophistry! I may be too civilized, but you are an anarchist, and your private war almost got Ross killed," she said, anger rising. "If you want to see Charles Weldon pay for his crimes, why not turn the evidence you have collected over to the authorities? It looks like you have more than enough to send him to prison for the rest of his life."

  "Prison would be too easy," he replied, his voice edged. "I want him to suffer. I swore that I would take away everything he valued, and that is what I have been doing."

  She lifted the top sheet of paper, listing Weldon's tangible and intangible assets, along with notes on Peregrine's progress. "So I noticed. I see that I fall about the middle of the list, between social standing and barony. But you didn't have to go as far as marrying me. I should think it would have been quite enough to end the betrothal."

  "Ah-h-h," he said, thinking he understood, "so that is what has upset you. You are right, breaking the betrothal would have been enough to injure Weldon. I married you because I wanted to."

  He had thought that statement might mollify his wife, but he was wrong. She slapped the sheaf of papers hard against her knee. "I admit that I'm not very flattered by my position on the list, but my expectations have never been high. What appalls me is the cost that others are paying for your private war. How many people will be injured by the fact that you are driving the railway into bankruptcy?"

  He shrugged. "When speculators guess correctly, they make money. When they don't, they lose. They deserve what they get."

  "It isn't just rich businessmen who are affected," she snapped. "Did you know that our butler invested his life savings in the company because he trusted your business judgment?"

  Peregrine was taken aback. "I didn't know that. I'll reimburse him for his losses."

  "That will help him, but what about all the others who are involved?" Sara exclaimed. "Some of the investors in the railway may be rich speculators, but there must be many others like Gates, modest people trying to earn a little hope and security.''

  "They took their chances like anyone else."

  "But they didn't know that they were investing in a company that you had decided to use as a weapon." Her mouth was a tight line. "You have been cutting a swath like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Deliberately ruining the railway was bad enough, but your lack of action about the brothels was unforgivable. You could have closed that ghastly place that Jenny was in, but you didn't do it."

  "I was waiting for the right time," he said defensively.

  "Damn the right time!" Sara leaped to her feet, unable to sit still any longer. "You have known about the place for months, and every night of that time, girls like Jenny have been suffering at the hands of strangers."

  The best reply he could make was "I helped Jenny."

  "That's not good enough, Mikahl!" Sara said, her voice trembling. "She is only one person. What about the other innocent people who have been suffering because you have been so determined to slowly savor every particle of your revenge?"

  "The world is full of evil. Nothing I might do will change that. If I had closed down Mrs. Kent's house, another one just like it would be open a week later."

  "But you could have done something that would have helped a few girls, and you didn't!" She bowed her head and pressed her hand over her eyes. "You don't even understand why that bothers me, do you? Because you can survive anything, you have no compassion for others who are less strong. You might help someone you know personally, but you have no thought for anyone else."

  "Why should I?" Feeling heated, he peeled off his coat and tossed it over a chair. "It is quite enough to be concerned with those I know. I have never deliberately harmed anyone who did not deserve it."

  She shook her head dully. "The fact that you are not deliberately harming strangers does not absolve you of responsibility. Nothing that Charles Weldon did to you can justify what you are doing to others."

  His anger at her criticism tilted over into fury. "There you are wrong, my innocent little wife. Whatever I do to Charles Weldon will be less than he deserves. For years, the only thing that kept me alive was knowing that someday I would make him suffer as he had made me suffer. And I promised myself that I would be close enough to savor his pain."

  "And that includes putting his daughter in a brothel?" Sara said, her voice a bleak thread of sound. "When I saw that on your list, I couldn't believe that you would do it."

  "Nor did I do it," he said sharply. "The idea had occurred to me, but I decided it would be enough if she disappeared for a few days, and Weldon thought that she had been sent to a whorehouse. He would have all the suffering without the girl being injured."

  Sara's eyes widened with disbelief. "I suppose I must be grateful that you had met Eliza in person. Would you have cheerfully put her in a brothel if she was only a name to you? The fact that you could even consider doing something like that—dear God, you have turned yourself into a monster." She turned away, no longer able to look at her husband.

  Peregrine caught her wrist and roughly turned her to face him. "If I am a monster, it is what he made me."

  Deliberately she scanned him from head to foot. "Charles Weldon didn't ruin your life in any obvious way. You are a successful, wealthy, intelligent man. You can do and be almost anything you wish. It seems that you choose to be a monster."

  Furious, he wanted to shake her. Instead, he released her wrist. "You have no idea what you are talking about."

  "Then tell me," Sara said softly, her stark eyes meeting his. "What did Charles Weldon do to you? Why do you believe you are justified in committing crimes while trying to destroy him?"

  Above all, he had wanted to avoid this. Yet he knew that if he could not make Sara understand, a breach that might never heal would open up between them.

  He spun away, not able to look at her. "I told you that Jamie McFarland had taken me on his ship. For two years I sailed with him, seeing the world and learning whatever eccentric thing he felt like teaching me. Then, when I was ten, the ship was captured by pirates from Tripoli."

  He took a deep breath, bracing himself for what was to come. "Most of the Barbary pirates were actually corsairs who were chartered by their government. The true corsairs operated under an elaborate system where the great European trading nations paid for safe conducts for their ships. There were rules about which foreigners could be sold in the slave market, and the local consuls could reclaim any of their citizens who were captured illegally."

  He stopped by the window, his shoulders rigid as he stared out into the blackness. "But there were some ships that operated outside the rules. Even though we were sailing under the British flag and should have been safe, we were attacked by pirates. Half of Jamie's crew was killed outright. The rest of us were captured and taken to an illegal slave market in Tripoli."

  It had been stiflingly hot, the air thick with the stench of fear and pain. "Charles Weldon was there. He was making an extensive tour of the Mediterranean and was an honored visitor in the city. I think he came to the market from pure curiosity. Since I was a child, I was separated from Jamie and the rest of his crew, and taken to the market with a group of women and children. I saw
Weldon and guessed that he might be English, so I broke away from the group and ran over to him. I said that I was English and begged for his help."

  Even a quarter century later, the memory was indelible. Weldon was young and handsome, immaculately turned out in spite of the Tripolitan heat. His nostrils had flared with delicate distaste when accosted by the scruffy child. "So you're English. Couldn't be anything else with that dreadful cockney accent." A light note of amusement in his voice, he had lifted young Michael's chin. "You're a pretty lad, though you could certainly use a good scrubbing. I've never seen eyes of such a color.''

  By then a guard had arrived to take Michael back to the group. As he was being dragged away, Weldon had said languidly, "I'll see what can be done."

  Peregrine's hands clenched convulsively, the pain of biting nails pulling him back to the present. "Christians could not buy slaves, so Weldon arranged to buy me through his host. As he took me to the house he was renting, I told him about Jamie McFarland and the others. I knew that if the British consul was notified, arrangements might be made to release them, so I begged Weldon to contact the consul. He said he would do it."

  Besides relief for himself, Michael was delighted that he could do something for Jamie after all the sea captain had done for him. Several weeks later, Weldon told me that he had not bothered to notify the consul. It was many years before I was able to return to Tripoli. When I did, I tried to learn what had happened to Jamie and the other crewmen, but they had vanished without a trace. I'm sure that Jamie died in slavery, though God only knows how or where. But I didn't know that at first. I thought I had been saved from slavery."

  A couple of quiet days had passed at Weldon's house. He hardly saw his benefactor, who had ordered him to take a bath and burn his ragged clothing. A fine Arabic robe in his size had been supplied. There had been fresh fruit and luxurious foods. Then, about the time that Michael was beginning to feel bored and anxious, Weldon had sent for him.

  Michael had gone eagerly. He had been fascinated by the dashing young man who had rescued him. Surely a man with such power could have done the same for Jamie McFarland. Perhaps Jamie himself was waiting to take Michael away.