The Golden Leopard

by Lynn Kerstan

  “No, Jessica. No wretched lawyers poking about and asking impertinent questions of the servants and neighbors. I would return the same answer to Mariah, were she here to speak for herself. But Mariah knows better than to embroil the family in a scandal. Only you would consider dragging us through the courts and exposing us to scurrilous reports in the newspapers. And all to no purpose, I must add. Sir Gerald would surely prevail.”

  “Gerald is a rotter. Everyone in London knows it. If the Carvilles stood against him, he wouldn’t have a chance. How can you think of abandoning her, Father? She’s your firstborn child. Don’t you care what happens to her?”

  There was a silence.

  “Of course I care,” he said at last, unconvincingly. “But I must also weigh the consequences of taking action. Not those that would fall upon me, I assure you, for I am too old to be concerned about my own reputation. And you have long since abandoned any care for yours.” His face was the color of ripe plums. “A Carville, a daughter of the Earl of Sothingdon, in trade! But have I tried to stop you, Jessica? Have I?”

  He had diverted the subject. She had to steer it back on course.

  But hell was descending. She rubbed her left hand against the arm of the chair, barely able to feel her fingers. The candles on the desk were brighter than before. Their flames, haloed with orange and green, danced like maenads in the hot, airless room.

  “Indeed,” her father was saying, “I have given you everything you asked. A London Season after the year of mourning for your mother. An allowance. A generous allowance, and a carriage and horses, and I pay for their stabling as well. You have the use of my town house, and did I not lend you three thousand pounds not so long ago?”

  “S-several years ago, Father, and it has been repaid with interest.” This had to end quickly, before she disgraced herself. And she had accomplished nothing. Nothing. “You have been generous, yes. If you believe me indebted to you, by all means send an accounting. If you want me out of the town house, I’ll find other lodgings. But this conversation, Father, is not about me. Mariah must not suffer for my failings.”

  He had begun to wring his damp handkerchief between his hands. They were callused fingers, long and thick, on a sportsman’s hands. Hands that trembled. “You must consider how a scandal would affect Aubrey,” he said. “As the fourteenth Earl of Sothingdon, I am custodian of an honorable name. It must be passed unblemished to my heir, and to his. That is what he expects. It is his right.”

  “Rubbish. Aubrey has an inflated sense of his own importance. He was born with”—Duran’s words sprang to her tongue—“with a poker up his backside.”

  “Jessica!”

  “Well, he was. And I fail to see why Mariah must be sacrificed on the altar of Aubrey’s scrupulous sensibilities.”

  “There are his children to consider as well, and his wife. You may have evaded responsibility for anyone but yourself, but others cannot so easily ignore what is due to one’s name and family. I am certain Mariah does not. Marriage is a lifelong commitment. It cannot be revoked simply because she now finds the circumstances unsatisfactory. One makes promises before God and the law, accepts one’s responsibilities, and endures. There is no other honorable choice.”

  He was speaking now of his own marriage, she realized with a stab of sympathy. How could she have imagined he would help? Year after year he had compromised, and accepted, and endured. His imagination did not encompass an alternative.

  Yellow and blue-green, the light condensed into a zigzag pattern. She could scarcely see him now. It would come and go by its own timetable, she knew, but closing her eyes, she willed the vision to fade. Above all things, her father must not know what was happening.

  “If Gerald comes for her,” she said, “will you at least try to keep Mariah here, under your protection?”

  “Certainly.” The earl sounded relieved to have something positive to offer. “I’ll tell him she is acting as my hostess and that I require her to remain for several weeks. But I cannot overrule him. As Mariah’s husband, it is his right to determine where she resides.”

  “I know.” In her voice she heard the anger she was trying to repress. It had been a mistake to approach her father. He was the last man who would exert himself to rescue a daughter embroiled in an unhappy marriage. “You’ll wish to join your friends,” she said more calmly. “Please go on without me.”

  He all but kicked over his chair in his haste to depart. She winced. Even slight sounds would pain her now, and bright lights. Words were increasingly hard to form. It was coming on quickly.

  Opening her eyes, she saw only a dark tunnel coruscated with green light. She dared not navigate the crowded passageway, nor take the chance of meeting Duran. She could not speak with him tonight.

  The servants’ stairs, then. If she could find the entrance door.

  Wreathed in cigar smoke, Duran sipped at a glass of excellent port, parried jokes with automatic good humor, and tried not to look at the mantelpiece clock. Unlike his host, he was finding it difficult to escape the dinner table.

  Sothingdon, after receiving a message from a servant, had departed as soon as the covers were removed, leaving his guests to their analysis of Lord Duran’s mystifying accuracy on the target range that afternoon.

  “Not so astonishing, I assure you,” he said when Marley demanded an accounting of his transformation. “I was finally allowed to shoot at something that didn’t move.”

  “I’ll wager your luck won’t hold when the partridges are flushed,” Benneton put in, his nose ruddy with sunburn.

  “I profoundly hope you’re wrong,” Duran said, coming to his feet. “Luck is all I have to rely upon. Anyone for coffee?”

  But Jessica, to his disappointment, was not waiting for him in the parlor. He had expected to find her in company with her sister. Accepting a cup of coffee from Lady Mariah, he carried it with him on a search of the public rooms on the first floor, rejecting invitations to make a fourth at whist or take a stick at the billiard table and wondering where the devil Jessica had got off to.

  After a while he made his way downstairs, passing a florid-faced Sothingdon going in the opposite direction. The earl, his eyes fixed on the marble stairs, didn’t appear to notice him.

  He was considering this uncharacteristic behavior as he made his way toward the back of the house and the conservatory, where he had found Jessica that morning. Perhaps she was waiting for him there. He was just passing the library and the earl’s study when, a little distance down the passageway, a swirl of sapphire blue disappeared into the wall.

  The illusion was explained when, drawing closer, he saw the outline of a servants’ door. But servants didn’t wear expensive taffeta or scent themselves with lilac water. Not wanting it to seem he had been following her, he returned to the main staircase and hurried to the third floor, arriving in time to see Jessica emerge from the wall and move slowly toward her room at the far end of the wing.

  She was walking as though putting the slightest weight on the floor would crush it. Once she paused with one hand pressed against the wall for support. He started to approach her, but halted when she slowly continued to her room and went inside.

  Moments later a maid, shaking her head, came out and, with a curtsy to Duran, went on about her business.

  Something was wrong, although he couldn’t begin to guess what it was. Not for a minute did he imagine that Jessica, having agreed to meet with him, had changed her mind. Were that the case, she would have told him so with a flourish. Stepping into the shadows of an alcove, he waited several minutes, considering his alternatives.

  They narrowed into one. And it wasn’t, he thought, striding purposefully down the passageway, as if she expected him to have any manners.

  A gentleman would have knocked. No, a gentleman would not be seeking admittance to her bedchamber at all.

  Duran, being a gentleman only when it suited him, raised the old-fashioned brass latch handle and, pleased to find she had not secured
the lock, stealthily opened the door.

  Chapter 8

  One candle, set on a dressing table, cast a small circle of light on the far side of the bedchamber. Beyond it, silhouetted against the windows, Jessica was slowly closing the curtains.

  Duran cushioned the latch bar with his thumb so that it dropped soundlessly into place.

  She must have sensed his presence. Letting go the curtain, she turned.

  Even from across the room, he saw the strained look at her lips and around her eyes. The effort it required to hold herself straight. “My manners are inexcusable,” he said into the taut silence. “But we had an appointment, Jessie, and you would not have broken it without reason. I’ll not leave here until you tell me why.”

  Although he was speaking quietly, she had flinched at his first word. He watched her draw two deep breaths, and another.

  “I cannot meet with you tonight,” she murmured. “Tomorrow, perhaps. Please go.”

  He moved closer, stopping when she lifted a hand. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “It’s nothing. A headache. But sound makes it worse, and light. After a night’s sleep I shall be perfectly fine.”

  He wasn’t sure he believed her, but only a cad would make a point of it. “As you wish, princess. I’ll send Lady Mariah to—”

  “Don’t. Please. No one must know.”

  “Your maid, then, or whomever else you name. I will not leave you here alone, so make a choice.”

  She lowered her head, squeezing out the words one by one. “You, I suppose. Just long enough to help me with my gown.”

  Remembering how she used to command him, urgently, to disrobe her, he crossed to where she stood and began slipping the pearl-shaped buttons at her nape from their loops. His fingertips felt numb.

  Head bowed, she stood perfectly still when he reached inside her bodice to unloose the tapes attaching it to her waistband. In a whisper of satin, the skirt pooled at her feet.

  Next he removed the bodice, carefully tugging the puffy sleeves down her arms. Once, when his hand brushed her bare shoulder, she made a tiny sound of pain.

  His heart was pounding like the feet of elephants on a dry Deccan riverbed. The simplest touch hurt her. More than once, more than a score of times in the aftermath of battle, he had held a dying comrade in his arms. He had schooled himself to feel nothing. To feel was to lose control of himself, and what good was he then?

  Closing his mind to what he was doing, he stripped her with practiced efficiency. When an underslip of soft muslin had joined her skirt on the carpet, he untied the bow on her corset and unwrapped the laces from their hooks. She hadn’t used to wear a corset. The Jessica he remembered could never bear to be confined.

  She hadn’t played by the rules, either. Not so many years ago, defying every convention, she had leaped into an affair with a man far beneath her in birth, breeding, and fortune. He still wondered why.

  Obviously she had come to regret it. And rightly so.

  A short time later, clad only in stockings and a filmy shift, she placed her hand on his for support and stepped away from the mound of fabric ringing her ankles.

  His hand burned where she touched him, all too briefly, before she let go and moved slowly toward the bed. He felt the effort it cost her, that silent pilgrimage, and knew better than to offer assistance. The single candle carved her out in ivory against the long black shadow she cast on the wall.

  Helplessly, he watched her lower herself on the edge of the tall bed and begin to remove her stockings. That much intimacy, he understood, was forbidden him.

  So be it. But if she thought he’d walk away from her now, she was about to learn otherwise. Approaching her from the opposite side of the bed, he spoke in the softest tone he could produce. “I’m going to draw down the bedcovers and arrange the pillows for you. Then I’ll leave, but only for a short time.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him in alarm.

  “If you lock the door while I’m gone, I’ll direct your father to send for a physician. Probably I should do so in any case. But I mean to try something else first, and it will not require me to betray your secret.” That was a lie, but only a small one. “Is there anything I can bring you when I return?”

  For a time he thought she wasn’t going to answer. The bed readied and the pillows fluffed, he was on his way out when he heard a sound—one word—coming from the bed. She had accepted his intention to return.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll bring ice.”

  Next door, in the small parlor that linked the two bedchambers assigned to Lords Pageter and Duran, Arjuna was cleaning and oiling their guns. Duran gestured him to continue and proceeded quickly to the dressing room where Shivaji sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed and hands resting, palms upturned, on his knees.

  Only his lips moved when he spoke. “The lady has agreed to assist us?”

  Duran required a few seconds to decipher the question. “I—no. We hadn’t a chance to discuss it. She is ill with a headache.”

  “A common excuse, I believe, when a female does not wish to cooperate.” Shivaji rose in a single, fluid motion. “We shall walk no farther on this false trail. You will prepare to depart in the early morning.”

  “Aren’t you listening?” Duran seized a handful of Shivaji’s tunic. “She’s ill. Everything hurts her. Sound. Light. She can’t bear to be touched. Look, there must be something in your demon’s closet to help her. Laudanum?”

  Shivaji studied him for several moments, as if seeking something in his face. “Is the pain concentrated on one side of her head?”

  Duran tried to remember how she had looked. What she had said. “I don’t know,” he admitted, releasing his grip and taking a step back. “Is that significant?”

  “It is usually the case. I suspect she suffers from a type of severe, recurring headache that generally afflicts women, although I have an uncle who experiences them regularly.” Shivaji went to the wooden cabinet, which was set on a small table in the corner of the dressing room, and began removing vials and packets from the drawers. “There is no remedy. In safe amounts laudanum is ineffective, and it can create a harmful dependency. Will the Lady Jessica permit me to examine her?”

  “She doesn’t want anyone to know. I insisted on keeping watch. She asked for ice.”

  “Very well. I shall prepare a draught of lavender tea infused with cloves and feverfew, and brew a tea with ginger root that should be given her if she is nauseated. Since you are to sit with her, perhaps you will wish to change your clothing. Do so while I send Arjuna to procure what is required. Then I shall tell you what to expect and how to deal with it.”

  Half an hour later, a cyclone of instructions whirling in his head, Duran reentered Jessica’s darkened bedchamber with a large tray carefully balanced between two shaking hands. On it were a pair of teapots, a glass and a cup, a small silver bucket filled with ice, another brimming with hot water, a pile of linen napkins and towels, and three basins stacked one on top of the other. Arjuna would be sent at intervals to replenish the supplies.

  “Sleep is best,” Shivaji had advised several times. “Never disturb her when she sleeps, and do not be so busy trying to help that you keep her awake.”

  She wasn’t sleeping now. Duran set the tray on a table near the door, moved the lone candle to a spot on the mantelpiece where its light did not reach the bed, and approached her on stockinged feet. “Can you swallow some lukewarm tea? It’s made with herbs that may dull the pain a bit. I have ice, if you prefer. But I’m told it’s best to wrap the ice in towels and—”

  When she winced he clamped his lips together, mentally kicking himself.

  At the corners, her mouth curved. “Tea,” she said on a puff of air.

  Relief made him clumsy, but he managed to fill the cup and carry it to the bed without spilling more than half the contents. She had struggled upright. He put one hand at her back to hold her while she drank, a fragrance of lavender and cloves wafting from t
he cup and mingling with the delicate lilac scent she favored.

  Her hair was pinned in coils. When she had emptied the cup he set it aside and, still holding her, began gently to remove the pins with his other hand. She leaned forward to make it easier. While he dealt with the side closest to him she experienced no difficulty, but when he touched the right side of her head, a cry escaped her.

  Instantly he stopped, his hand hovering above her.

  “It will feel better,” she whispered, “when the pins are out.”

  Removing them was agonizing for her, he could tell, but she made no sound as one by one they slid free and her long, heavy hair spread around her shoulders. He banked pillows behind her—Shivaji had suggested that—and gave her a second cup of the tea. She drank most of it before turning her head away.

  Dismissing him. He sensed her withdrawing into herself and understood that she was now to be left alone.

  He withdrew as well, to finish closing the curtains. Then he slumped onto a hard-backed chair and sat with his elbows propped on his knees and his face buried in his hands. He couldn’t bear seeing her like this. Not Jessica, who had always charted her own course and commanded the elements like a goddess. At least that was the impression she had given him during the short time they spent together.

  Had he left the party a few minutes earlier, they would never have met at all. It was supposed to have been his last night in London, and he’d stopped by Lady Somebody’s ball on a hunt for several gentlemen who owed him money. Meandering from room to room, he neatly cornered his prey and accepted whatever they were carrying—banknotes, rings, pocket watches—to cover their gaming debts. Naturally he couldn’t let it be known that he was departing on an India trader the very next morning. They’d never have paid up.

  His voyage to England, a dream he was unaware he’d had until the opportunity presented itself, had come to nothing in the end. His expectations had been too high, perhaps, and the reality too bloody realistic.

  His very distant cousin Bertram, eleventh Baron Duran, turned out to have been a successful drunkard and a dismal gambler before tripping over one of his wife’s lapdogs and tumbling down a flight of stairs. He left behind him a mountain of debts, a bad-tempered wife, two ill-favored daughters, and a besmirched title that, in the absence of any closer male relation, had devolved upon an astonished Hugo Duran. The agent who finally located him in Calcutta had conveyed the news without mentioning the debts and the daughters.