Come the Dawn

by Christina Skye

  “Come here, you impossible child.” The duchess tugged India into her arms. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this sooner?”

  “I couldn’t. It all happened so — so quickly. And when the man I told you of didn’t come back, I couldn’t bear to discuss it. Not with anyone.”

  “My dear sweet gel,” the duchess said huskily, smoothing India’s hair. “You’ve come to womanhood by a rocky path, I fear. But face it you must. This man is gone. You have your whole life before you, no matter how impossible that seems now. You must find new joys and new challenges to live for, do you hear me?” The old woman made her voice stern. “You owe it to yourself and those who love you. You also owe it to the dashing man who’s just waiting to have his heart stolen and his life overturned when you walk into that ballroom and pull him under your spell.”

  “Not for a second time,” India said sadly. “I will never feel that kind of love again.” She knew that wild, blinding passion was forever beyond her. But her grandmother was right: she had a duty to her family and herself.

  So she would go to London. She would wear her grandmother’s chosen finery and attend all the balls and routs the duchess arranged for her. If a decent and kind man of suitable family asked for her hand in marriage, India decided she would accept him, as long as he understood that her heart would not be given in the bargain.

  For India Delamere knew she had no more heart to give. Devlyn Carlisle had taken it with him to the grave.

  Outside the window came the low howl of a frightened animal. Instantly India turned, her eyes dark with anxiety. “That’s Luna!” She shoved off her satin gown, revealing a pair of Ian’s snug breeches.

  “India Delamere, I told you no more of your brother’s clothes!”

  “But I must go, Grandmama.” India grabbed up Ian’s old white shirt and jerked it over her head, already halfway to the door. “If those repellent men have come back to shoot at Luna, I swear I’ll fill their backsides full of buckshot.”

  The Duchess of Cranford shook her head as her stubborn granddaughter bolted out the door in a blur of leather and white cambric. Then slowly her lips curved up in a smile, for the white-haired duchess was recalling a particularly reckless exploit of her own that had taken place half a century before.

  ~ ~ ~

  Shadows clung to the corners of the room. A tall figure stood near the dancing fire, lost in thought. His eyes were the color of polished steel and his hair but one shade lighter than black.

  Yet it was the mouth that set him as a man apart. Framed in tiny lines, the full lips showed that this man had once been quick to laughter.

  But no more. Now the lips were tight and flat. There was no gaiety or joy about his hard shoulders or deeply tanned face, not this night of late autumn, 1816.

  Home again, he thought, looking at the fine old prints, at the row of books and the intricate models of ships he had once made so patiently.

  Everything about the room felt strange, as if it belonged to someone else.

  When had he read those books or touched the old prints? It seemed ten lifetimes ago.

  He gripped the marble mantel and laughed then, the sound flat and bitter in the empty room. For he could never truly go home again.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Don’t seem right. Not a bit right.”

  Resplendent in amethyst satin and puce velvet, the seventh viscount Monkton studied the glittering throng jamming the ballroom of the Duchess of Cranford’s London town house. “Thorne ought to be here. He was always the charmed one. Don’t know what he was doing on that blasted hill at Waterloo anyway.” He sighed and stuck his quizzing glass back in his waistcoat pocket. “Nothing to see here. Same faces. Same tired stories. Not even any decent scandal this season.” Suddenly he frowned. “Good lord, isn’t that Wellington over there flirting with the Countess of Marchmont? Bad blood there, mark my words. Her husband isn’t even a fortnight in the grave and she’s prowling for new partners to fill her bed.”

  His friend, the Earl of Pendleworth, shook his head. “She prowled even before he was dead. But the problem with you, Monk, is you’re spoiled. You always expect the best of people and most of them don’t measure up.”

  “If I’m spoiled, it’s Thorne’s doing. He always knew how to do a thing devilish fine, Penn.” As he spoke, Monkton’s long face grew even more melancholy. “Don’t seem right,” he repeated. “Who else could race Alvanley to Brighton in his curricle, then be back in time to fight a duel of honor over an indiscretion with Repton’s wife? The whole town’s flat, I tell you. I miss Thorne. He could always set a spark to things.”

  Lord Pendleworth’s myopic eyes narrowed. “I beg you will conceal your tristesse, my dear Monk. From the things I saw during my brief time in Belgium, I’ve come to suspect that Lady India has been deeply affected by his loss. Hardly kind to dredge up her sadness with more memories. She’s only just come back to London, you know. When I saw her yesterday on Bond Street, she was looking decidedly pale.”

  Monkton toyed with his embroidered waistcoat. “I won’t avoid the subject, if that’s what you’re hinting at, Penn. Thorne was my best friend. If the lady is so fickle to forget him already, I want nothing more to do with her.”

  “Monk, my idiot, it’s been well over a year. Even a Delamere heiress must eventually think of her future. She must marry and marry well. The Duke of Devonham is a doting parent, but even his patience must begin to grow short. I’ve heard her grandmother’s been trotting eligible suitors back and forth, but India refuses to look at any of them. All except for Longborough, perhaps.”

  Monkton snorted. “Longborough?” He studied a sober figure standing among the dowagers. “I don’t believe it. The fellow’s got no sense of color and even less notion of how to tie a cravat. Don’t make a bit of sense to me how India could ever consider him for a husband.”

  “Perhaps the lady looks for something other than the skillful fall of a cravat in a husband when she accepts a proposal,” his companion said with awful irony.

  “Being damned clever again, Penn. Don’t like it. Can’t follow a word in ten when you turn clever and speak in that prodigious cold tone. Wish Thorne were here. He always knew how to handle you. Stap me if I do.” Shaking his head, the viscount heaved a long sigh. “And I don’t give a damn what you say, here’s to Thorne. Best friend any of us ever had. Never made me feel my wits were all to let. Always managed to lend a spare guinea without reading a lecture. Taught me how to tie my first Mathematical knot, too.” Of the three, this last skill was clearly the highest accolade for Monkton. “Here’s to you, Devlyn Carlisle, wherever you are. You’re bloody well missed, old friend.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Out in the street, beyond the clattering carriages, beyond the jewel-clad women, beyond the urchins in tattered shirts lined up for a look at the gentry in all their splendor, a man stood surveying the Duchess of Cranford’s brightly lit ballroom.

  His tall frame was swathed in a heavy, caped riding coat. His eyes were brooding, their silvery depths aglint in the moonlight.

  Travelers swirled around him. Grimy children begged for a spare pence. But the sober figure gave no notice. His eyes were locked on the windows of the ballroom at the far side of the square.

  The Watch moved past, then stopped. “Lost, are you? New to London, mayhap?”

  The man seemed to rouse himself. His lips took on a bitter smile. “Not lost. I’ve merely been … gone some months.”

  “Looking for an address, are you? Or information about a certain resident? Someone you were fond of?”

  The silver eyes narrowed. “I have all the information I shall ever need.”

  At the coldness in his tone, the Watch took an involuntary step back. “Well, then, I’ll be off. Clearly, you have no need of me.”

  There was no answer from the broad-shouldered figure in the shadows. Before him the road stretched dark, like a gorge that separated him from the very different man he had been before the horrors of Waterloo.

&
nbsp; For he was Devlyn Carlisle and he was alive, yet not alive.

  He was returned, yet not truly returned.

  He fingered his chest, where a French cavalry sword had laid him low in the Belgian mud. There he’d lain for two days before his body was finally discovered.

  Memories…

  Always too many memories. And of her, not enough.

  He slid his hat lower and moved into the glittering throng spilling toward Devonham House. He would have to work to make his way inside in this crush. All London had turned out to see the duchess’s beautiful granddaughter, it seemed.

  And though it was utterly rash, Devlyn could not keep from joining them.

  As he turned down a side street, Thornwood’s face slid into view, all hard lines and angles. And in the glow of the lamplight the scar at his jaw gleamed with cold brilliance.

  ~ ~ ~

  White candles danced in the wind, ruffling the elegant lace curtains. The air was warm and the room was quiet, scented with a vase of roses from the duchess’s conservatory.

  Yet India Delamere shivered, unnaturally cold as she stood before the cheval glass, a pleated and tucked chemise hugging her slender body. Lace edged her neck and creamy shoulders. Long kid gloves lay nearby, along with her mother’s pearl and diamond choker.

  India knew she should dress. Her family was waiting below. The carriages had finally clattered past and all the guests had arrived.

  And still India stood frozen, stroking her gown. Her father had told her the exquisite satin had come from the far workshops of imperial China, where the fabric had been loomed for the empress herself.

  But the blue only made India think of a cool, boundless sky and the din of an army on the march. It made her remember Brussels at the end of spring, a city of desperate gaiety perched on the razor’s edge of war.

  And it made her think of a man with a hard mouth and eyes of slate-gray. A man who had kissed her, then marched away under that sky to die.

  To some he was Thorne, the most dashing of his generation. To his fellow officers, he was a legend as much for his charm as for his reckless courage. India would never forget her last sight of him, recently recovered from fever but determined to rejoin his regiment in the muddy fields of Waterloo.

  In the madness of those frantic weeks India had offered him her heart. Though Devlyn, too, had been struck, he had been resolute in protecting her honor. He had put her off with all his exquisite courtesy, and no one, it was said, could resist the charm of a Carlisle.

  India had not. Not then, nor later, when a nightingale singing in a garden full of roses had been the final spur to their blinding passion.

  India had melted in his arms, all fire and yearning. Her honest desire had been more than Thornwood could resist. By the morning they were lovers.

  He had been bound by her innocence and honesty, bemused and enchanted by her spirit. Had there been more time, that enchantment might have grown to something far deeper.

  But Devlyn Carlisle had been a stranger to deep emotions.

  True and honest feelings had no place in his upbringing. His mother had been more concerned with pin money than her son’s needs, while his father had been too hardened a gamester to care for anything beyond his next winning. As a result Devlyn had learned to fear any feeling beyond his control or understanding.

  And what he had felt for India Delamere went far beyond both.

  India had glimpsed these things dimly, from the few comments Devlyn had made about his cold upbringing. Soon she came to see that they were moth and flame, fire and ice, she sprung from a warm and boisterous family and he from a succession of rigid servants who replaced an unfeeling mother and careless father. They had just begun to learn from each other’s strengths when Dev was called back to his regiment.

  India had fought back her tears and smiled, then kissed him goodbye. Devlyn had given her one last reckless, heartbreaking smile. Then he had gone off to die.

  And India’s heart had died with him.

  ~ ~ ~

  “India? Are you there?”

  The door creaked open. India sat up with a start as her grandmother glared at her in the dressing room. “I’m here, Grandmama.”

  “That blasted wolf isn’t hidden in here, I hope?”

  India busied herself at the mirror, her face hidden. “Of course not. Luna is out in the stables, just as you insisted.”

  “Humph.” The duchess frowned at India. “Why aren’t you dressed? Here’s the whole ton come out for a glimpse of you and you’re mooning by the window!” The imperious old woman pulled the damask gown from India’s bed and slid it over her granddaughter’s ivory shoulders. “Whatever are you about, gel!” Her voice was tight with concern. “Your brother Luc is already below, with his wife at his side. And a lovely couple they make, too. Silver’s figure is quite restored from her recent accouchement,” the duchess added, while she tugged and smoothed the lines of India’s dress.

  India tried to smile, tried to summon the enthusiasm to face the crush of guests below. “How … lovely. It will be a delight to see Silver again. Are the twins still in the country?”

  The duchess snorted. “Not a bit of it! Luc’s packed the two into the nursery with their new nanny. He swears he and Silver can’t bear to be away from the rascals for even a night. Unnatural, if you ask me,” the duchess added crossly.

  But India knew that despite her frown, the duchess was delighted to be near her great-grandchildren. The imperious old woman simply considered it undignified to reveal the depth of her emotional attachments.

  As the duchess fretted over her gloves, India listened to the strains of the waltz drifting up the stairs. There must be six hundred people thronging the ballroom, hoping for a glimpse of her elder brother, who was newly returned to London after being thought dead for five long years. The ton was also hoping for a glimpse of Luc’s beautiful, russet-haired wife.

  India prayed that her brother would draw some of the attention away from her. She was in no kind of mood for small talk and idle laughter.

  She frowned at her face in the cheval glass. Too pale. Eyes too dark, cheekbones too sharp, and lips too wide. She had seen how men reacted to her mouth, eyeing it almost hungrily.

  The gesture had always made her shudder.

  All except once.

  When one man had looked at her so, India had known a hot flash of desire. And when Devlyn Carlisle had kissed her, she had felt only heat and desperate longing.

  Oh, Dev, why did you have to go? Why couldn’t you have come back to me? Nothing will ever be the same again.

  “India Delamere, where have your wits gone wandering?” The duchess shoved a fine sandalwood fan into her granddaughter’s hands. “Your poor benighted brothers are downstairs trying to hold off half of London and here you stand daydreaming.”

  India caught a deep breath and shoved her pain deep, where it wouldn’t show. When she turned, her eyes were cool and her chin was high. She had her Delamere pride at least. She would hold tight to that for strength.

  “I don’t know who he was or what he did to you,” the duchess said fiercely, “but it’s time you put the man behind you.” Her fragile fingers closed over India’s. “If he had any sort of decency, he’d have come back for you. Waterloo is finished and gone!”

  India sighed.

  Her grandmother was right. Waterloo must be her past.

  She would not let the world see her bleed. She was a Delamere after all. She had too much pride to wear her heart on her sleeve!

  “Your brothers are waiting by the foot of the stairs. They’ll squire you through the crowd. Those two friends of yours, Monkton and Pendleworth, are also wishing to see you, as is Connor MacKinnon, Luc’s friend. Let’s not keep them waiting any longer, shall we?”

  “You’re so good to me, Grandmama,” India said softly. “Luc, Ian, Silver — all of you. Far too good.”

  “Nonsense. I’m only doing what those two restless parents of yours would wish. You would think they
had had enough adventuring around the world in search of antiquities by now.” The old woman shook her head. “Just you remember we all love you and wish only to see you happy.”

  If only I could be happy, India thought.

  But she raised her head and gave her titian hair a final careless glance, adjusting one satin sleeve to a rakish slant. “Very well, Grandmama, I believe I am ready. Let us go and find a few male hearts to break, shall we?”

  Arm in arm, the two women descended the broad stairway to the glittering ballroom. Candlelight gleamed on the duchess’s pearls and shimmered over the camellias pinned artlessly in India’s upswept hair.