Star Crossed Seduction

by Jenny Brown

“Of course. And now that you know what she really is, you’ll be spared any lingering dreams about what might have been.”

  “Absolutely. Men in our line of work are far better off without such dreams.”

  In the end, it was the magnitude of the betrayal that made him realize, at last, how he could save Temperance. It would not have been possible to do it had he still been the man he had been this morning, loyal to the regiment, to his superiors, and to the crown. But they had lost any claim to his loyalty, and that freed him to do what needed to be done.

  There was only one person in England with the power to keep Temperance safe—the king. So he must go to him and reveal exactly what had happened. Once the king knew the facts, he would pardon Temperance, for the blame for his loss of the jewel would rest where it belonged, on the department.

  He went to his room and found his writing things. Sir Charles’s name could open many doors, even those of Carlton House. He addressed a letter to the king’s private secretary, wording it to suggest he wrote it in an official capacity, as an agent of the department. He included just enough detail to hint, in a way that would be understandable only to someone in the know, that he had information about the theft that would be of great interest to the king.

  He secured the letter with the seal that bore his regimental motto: Pristinae virtutis memores. The memory of former valor. The memory would likely be all he had left of his valor when his visit to the king was done. He had no doubt of what the department would do, once they learned of how he had betrayed them. His life would be measured in days. But if he could save Temperance, it would be worth it.

  After all, he was a soldier. He’d always expected to die young.

  Chapter 21

  The hours had dragged by on leaden feet. Trev wasn’t coming back. Why couldn’t she accept it and get on with what she knew she must do? He’d wanted to believe her. He’d tried to remain true to his vows, but who was to say what his superior might have told him? Men who could learn of something as secret as the mark she bore on her thigh and use it to drive two lovers apart were capable of anything.

  Perhaps they’d shown him more clever fabricated proofs. She couldn’t fault him for believing them when she herself had believed the nabob’s lies and stamped on the ring Trev had given her to seal their pledge of love. She couldn’t expect him to be stronger than she’d been.

  But she would have to mourn the death of their shared dreams later. For Trev was gone, and there was a price on her head. He had told her that if he didn’t come back, she must flee. So it was time, at last, to set off for America. There was nothing left for her, here on England’s soil, and every hour she delayed, swayed by the vain hope Trev might return, was an hour that made it less likely she would escape.

  She made her way down the stairs and asked a servant to take a message to Lord Hartwood. Trev had told her to apply to him should it come to this.

  Then she seated herself on the bench of the pianoforte in the drawing room. It had been a long time since she had played an instrument, but she had practiced too steadily in the years before she’d left home for her fingers to have forgotten all they once knew even though she’d put their agility to such a different use in the years between.

  She picked out the themes of her favorite pieces, playing with increasing confidence as the sun sank and plunged the room into darkness. She didn’t need to see the keyboard to play, and the intimacy of the dusk made it easier for her to lose herself in the lyrical melodies, whose beauty gave her the strength to bear her sadness.

  It was only much later, when she had run through the pieces she knew well, that her fingers faltered. She missed one note, then the next, and finally stopped. It was in the pause that followed that she heard the tiny rustle that told her she wasn’t alone. Her hands froze. She whirled around to see who had come in on her unobserved.

  It was Trev. Her heart lifted. He’d come back!

  When he realized she’d become aware of his presence, he detached himself from the shadows and approached her. He paused, drinking her in with his gaze, as if he couldn’t get enough of the sight of her.

  “You play so beautifully,” he whispered. “I should have known you would.” He took another step toward her, and, for a moment, she could have sworn his lip quivered. Then, with a wistfulness in his tone that chilled her blood, he said, “How happy we should have been had things worked out differently.”

  The blood stopped flowing in her veins. “Why can’t we be happy? You’ve come back. You said you wouldn’t return unless you could prove me innocent.”

  “You are innocent. I forced the truth out of Fanshawe. But it won’t help. He wants you arrested and condemned though he knows you’re blameless.”

  “But why?”

  Quickly, Trev sketched out the details of the scheme his superiors had involved them in. When he was done, she understood the fear she saw in his eyes. Things were far worse than she had dreamed they could be.

  “My loyalty has been fatally misplaced,” he said. “But it’s too late to undo the damage I have done. Fanshawe will not back down. He insists you must be sacrificed to save the lives of our soldiers.”

  “So you have no choice but to go along with him?” She could barely breathe.

  “Are you mad, Temperance? I would die before I did that. I’ll use what is left of my life to keep you safe from them.” He dropped on his knees before her. “Forgive me, Priya, for putting you into the power of such men.”

  “Why can’t I just take ship for America? They can’t hurt me there.”

  “Fanshawe has men watching you. They’ll arrest you if you try to slip away.”

  The resignation in his voice frightened her. She remembered the pride he had taken in his loyalty to the department. To his regiment. In his service to the king. The knowledge that he’d been deceived by those to whom he’d pledged his life and his loyalty must be intolerable.

  He stood. “I got you into this,” he said. “I’ll get you out.”

  “How?”

  “There’s only one way. I’ll go to the king and tell him what really happened. I’ll prove to him that you are innocent and demand that he issue you a pardon. Hopefully, that will be enough to keep you safe long enough to get out of the country. I’ve already sent a letter to the king’s private secretary asking for an interview.”

  “But if the king finds out that you’ve been part of a plot to keep the jewel from him, won’t he think of you as a traitor?”

  “Perhaps. And even if he doesn’t, the department won’t forgive me for betraying their scheme. But none of it will matter as long as the king pardons you.”

  He let his hands rest on her shoulders, clinging to her in the deepening darkness as if drawing strength from her. Then, in an abstracted voice, he said, “You alone were loyal, you, who I least trusted. I don’t know how you can forgive me.”

  He gulped, then continued, “You told me nothing but the truth. I will never forgive myself for not believing you. Fanshawe admitted that the nabob let you escape just as you told me. And Fanshawe knew about your mark, too. He made it clear he thought the mention of it would be enough to make me believe you’d betrayed me. So it must have been he who told Sir Humphrey about it.”

  “But how could Fanshawe have known of it?”

  “He has spies everywhere. He bragged he had them even in the Weaver’s operation. I cannot ever forgive myself that I let myself be taken in by him. I should have trusted you.”

  His voice took on a faraway sound as he added, “It was Lady Hartwood’s reading that gave me the facts that forced him to reveal the truth to me. It was uncannily accurate. She was right about the Weaver working for the king and being a wealthy woman—if you hadn’t trusted me with that information, all would have been lost.” He paused. “The Weaver turned out to be Mother Bristwick.”

  So that was why Snake’s words had echoed the old bawd’s sneer. But Trev’s revelation made something else fall into place. “Does that mean some of the g
irls in Mother Bristwick’s bagnio were Fanshawe’s agents?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it must have been one of them who told Fanshawe about my birthmark.”

  Trev’s face fell. He reached for her hand and squeezed it gently. “If you were forced to be one of her girls, you don’t have to be afraid to tell me. It won’t change my love for you. Nothing ever will.”

  “Though it does you credit, you need not be so forbearing.” She smiled at him in a way she hoped might give him reassurance. “My nimble fingers kept me from having to sell myself to her. But I did befriend one of her girls—the one who brought me that note from Snake. She used to take me to Mother Bristwick’s to bathe. They had a real bath in their bagnio, and I couldn’t resist the chance to get clean. One time when we bathed there, she saw my mark and said I was a fool not to go to work for Mother B, for the mark ensured I’d please the culls. Someone who overheard us must have passed the information on to your Mr. Fanshawe.”

  Trev nodded. “How clever he must have thought he was being, using that mark to divide us. And how close he came to success. But even though we understand his scheme, he has still ensured we can never be happy together.”

  “Nonsense!” We will be happy together, Trev. I won’t stand for anything else.”

  “You shame me with your courage. But courage alone won’t save you. I must go to the king and lay the facts before him. I’ll make him pardon you. After that, the department may do to me what they will. If you are safe, it won’t matter.”

  “It will matter to me! I won’t let you throw away your life. It isn’t necessary.”

  His hands tightened on her shoulders. “Let me be the judge of that. I must order you to let me handle this.”

  “I won’t obey. I’m not some trooper under your command, who must follow orders without argument. Do you have so little trust in our love that you would sacrifice your life without giving me a chance to find a better way?”

  “There is no better way.”

  “Not one you can come up with, perhaps, but you haven’t given me a chance to help. Why now, when it matters most, do you push me away?”

  He bit his lip. “Because the only way I can save you is to make that final sacrifice.”

  “You’ve made too many sacrifices already. You’ve been trained to always give up everything that matters to you. But that’s not how I was raised. I’m far more selfish than you are, and since my brain hasn’t been hobbled like yours by misplaced loyalty, I’ll find a way to save the two of us that doesn’t require so one-sided a sacrifice.”

  She took his hand. The tremor she felt as his fingers clenched hers told her how hard he was striving to give up the habits of a lifetime. She squeezed it, drawing strength from the love that flowed beneath his torment.

  Then she spoke again. “You’ll have to trust me if we’re to find the way out. You can’t do it alone. You’ve said we are two halves of one whole. Now you must trust in what we become when we join ourselves together. That, and that alone, will be what saves us now.”

  Though he was drawing deep breaths, he couldn’t get enough air. He’d felt like this only once before, after climbing a difficult peak in the mountains of Hindu Kush. Could it be true what she had said?

  Since the moment when he’d come upon her playing the instrument so beautifully in the fading light, he’d dreaded the moment when he must leave her behind and meet the fate he deserved. He’d told himself it was his karma, that by sacrificing himself to save her, he might atone for all his sins.

  But her words made him face the truth. It was easier for him to welcome death alone than to do what she demanded of him and join himself with her when it really mattered. Could he trust her that much? Could he believe their love was more than a transient pleasure to be put aside when danger threatened?

  If he couldn’t, all their talk of love had been meaningless.

  Deep inside, in the place where he had been alone since that day when his grandfather had told him the painful truth, fear screamed he must trust no one but himself. He was alone, and it was best he should remain that way.

  But then she reached for his hand, and her gentle touch told him he was not alone. He didn’t have to be alone. He’d gone as far as he could on his own, but his old ways had failed him, and now he must try something new.

  He must blend his strength and discipline with her guile and willingness to fight. She had retained the independence they’d trained out of him. She was free to act as he was not. So he must look to her to save them. He must give her that much trust.

  “Captain Trevelyan!” Lady Hartwood had entered the music room. “I hope your meeting went well.” She turned to Temperance. “My husband asked me to act for him regarding your note. I gather it is a matter of some urgency.”

  Temperance explained the situation. When she had finished, Trev said, “Lady Hartwood, I owe you a profound apology. Your chart was right about everything—the nature of the theft, who was behind it, and so much more. Can you cast another chart to help us find a way out of our predicament?”

  “I wish I could, but I can’t. It would be a mistake to turn to a chart for guidance in so grave a crisis. If I were to make an error in reading it—as I often do—it might cause untold harm. A chart must never substitute for our common sense—and you both have plenty of that. You are Scorpios,” she reminded him, “so you must let your instincts guide you.”

  She turned toward Temperance. “Tell me quickly. What is the key to solving this problem? Don’t think about your answer, just give me your first impression.”

  “The king is the key,” Temperance answered. “Trev is right about that, but he’s wrong in thinking he must approach him as a dutiful inferior. The king is too used to people bowing and scraping before him. To approach him that way would only bring out his contempt. So we must do the unexpected. We must approach him from a position of power.”

  “But the king holds all the power,” Trev protested. “We have nothing to bargain with.”

  “Who said anything about bargaining? For all his rank, the king is a man, and I can manipulate any man once I know what motivates him. I couldn’t have survived on the street as long as I did if I couldn’t.”

  “I learned that firsthand,” he said with a rueful grin.

  She turned to Lady Hartwood. “Do you have the king’s chart?”

  “Yes. My Aunt Celestina was an avid student of history.”

  “If you would fetch it, perhaps we can find something in it that will tell us why the king is so set on getting this particular jewel. My instincts tell me that is also a key.”

  Trev broke in. “Do you also have Henry VIII’s chart?”

  “I believe I do,” Lady Hartwood said.

  “Then I beg you, bring it, too. I have a sudden inspiration.”

  After Lady Hartwood went off to get the charts of their sovereigns, Temperance asked, “Why did you want to look at Henry’s chart?

  He fought against his desire to embrace her in this brief moment when they found themselves alone. But he forced himself to keep his mind on the matter at hand.

  “It was something Sir Humphrey told me. He said the Jewel of Vadha had once been Henry’s. What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the name, Henry VIII?”

  “His six wives, of course—and how he chopped off a couple of their heads.”

  He stabbed the air. “Exactly. Henry was good at ridding himself of troublesome wives—unlike our current monarch, who has failed so signally with his. I wonder if that is why he chose a Tudor theme for his coronation. Can you see the point I’m getting at?”

  She furrowed her brow. “I can see why he might wish he had some of Henry’s skill in ridding himself of a wife, but why would he go to such lengths to secure this one jewel, just because it was Henry’s? Henry must have had hundreds of jewels.”

  “Sir Humphrey told me the jewel had magical properties. I’d paid it no heed, thinking that was just more of his foolishness. But the Jewel o
f Vadha was a Hindu jewel before it was Henry’s, and Hindus do believe jewels have magical properties—ones that derive from their astrological powers.”

  Lady Hartwood had returned, clutching a sheaf of papers and several large books. As she seated herself again at her desk, he appealed to her. “Does your astrology assign special powers to gems?”

  She thought for a moment. “My ancestor Lilly does associate specific gems with each planet, though I have never paid much attention to them.”

  Perhaps he was on the right track. “The Jewel of Vadha is an oriental topaz. What does your ancestor say about its astrological properties?”

  Lady Hartwood leafed through her book. “It is one of Mercury’s gems. So it would be useful to those whose Ascendants were ruled by Mercury—people born with Gemini or Virgo rising.”

  “Does that describe Henry VIII?”

  Her Ladyship consulted his chart. “It does. Virgo was rising at his birth. So the topaz would have been his stone.” So perhaps this mystical connection was behind the king’s fascination with this particular gem. But that wasn’t going to help them.

  Temperance broke in. “What of our current monarch? What stone would rule his birth?”

  Lady Hartwood consulted her other chart. “He was born with Aquarius rising, ruled by Saturn, so his stone would be the sapphire.”

  “Good,” Temperance said. “And what does our king’s chart tells us are his chief weaknesses?”

  “What a Scorpionic question,” Lady Hartwood observed. “But, of course, your situation is also Scorpionic, being, as it is, a matter of life and death.” She studied the king’s chart. “He has many planets in the Second House, which explains why he expresses himself mainly through the acquisition of objects.”

  “The whole world knows of his passion for collecting,” Temperance said. “I was hoping you could uncover his secrets with his chart.”

  “Perhaps the secret lies in why he is driven to collect things. His ruling planet, Saturn—the planet of fear—is poorly placed and weak. Despite his power, it is fear that drives him to acquire so many things. Pisces is intercepted in his First House, too. So while his collecting is driven by his love of beauty, he can get lost in that beauty, just as a drunkard gets lost in his cups, and he may easily be deceived. I would imagine he has bought many fakes.”