The Golden Leopard

by Lynn Kerstan

  “And then you’ll be gone.”

  “Make no mistake about that. Fair warning this time. I shall leave, and I’ll never come back. It’s possible, although I don’t know how to go about it, to counterfeit evidence sufficient to have me declared legally dead. Failing that, you can devise whatever story you like to account for my absence.”

  “Such as, ‘I’m a fool who married a scoundrel’?”

  “I never said you had to tell the truth.”

  He thought—he was nearly sure—that she laughed. There was a small sound, anyway, and the air in the room did not feel so heavy as before.

  “If we married,” she said, “who would stand witness for you? Shivaji?”

  Was she actually considering it? His heartbeat speeded up. “I doubt he’d be permitted in the church. But you’re really asking if he’ll interfere, and the answer is, I don’t know. He might consent, if your help is conditional on the marriage. Is it?”

  “No. You have heard my conditions. A marriage would be solely for my own purposes. If I could think of any.”

  “Might I suggest nostalgia?”

  The sound came again, the one he’d hoped for. The almost-laugh.

  It would suffice.

  There was a time, he had learned, for diplomacy. For careful maneuvering. On occasion, even a time for retreat. But sometimes, when the blood was up and the foe obdurate, only a direct charge would carry the day.

  Instantly he was across the room. Drawing Jessica to her feet, he moved his hands to her waist and paused, testing her response. No struggle. Not the slightest protest. Thank God. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to release her.

  Nor was she stiff and resistant, no, she was leaning into him, head lifted, so he kissed her. And felt her fingers tangle in his hair, so he deepened the kiss. And heard her make a purring invitation low in her throat, so he swept her in his arms and carried her, as he had done before, silently up the, dark stairs and along the passageway to her bedchamber.

  Chapter 17

  Duran lounged on a chair at the foot of the bed, gazing at the woman who held his life in her hands. Not his survival—that remained in other hands—but everything he was learning to value.

  She was lying across the bed, her disordered hair streaming over the pillows, her legs a little open, one bent at the knee. Above it, a white satin garter winked from the crumpled lace of her petticoats. She lay asleep where he’d left her ten minutes earlier, shortly after she’d ravished him.

  His smile—he’d been smiling for ten minutes—widened. Voracious female. She couldn’t wait, not for clothing to come off, not for anything. Once the door had closed behind them and he’d set her on her feet, she had pounced on him like a jungle cat. Like a woman who had not been made love to in a long, long time.

  Which could not be the case, he was sure. From the beginning, he had admired the way she saw what she wanted, went after it, and secured it for herself. At their first encounter she’d been so bold it had astonished him to discover, at the very moment when it became otherwise, that she had been a virgin. Now he envied the man who replaced him, and all the men after that.

  Perhaps not so many, though. She would be selective. He hoped her discernment had improved since she picked out the likes of him in a crowded ballroom. He’d never told her how he had seen her gaze home in on him and remain there as he moved around the ballroom, and that he’d seen her approach their hostess, gesture in his direction, and sail across the room with the reluctant woman in tow to procure an introduction. In a way, he regretted that she had become more careful now, more subtle, more in control of herself.

  Until she was alone in a bedchamber with her lover. Then she had no control at all.

  He had forgot how she exhausted herself in the first rush of passion, like a bird of prey soaring and wheeling and diving until the climactic blow. Then, breathless and palpitating and triumphant, she dropped immediately into a motionless sleep.

  It never lasted long. She would wake soon, he knew, those glorious lashes fluttering, her eyes shining with wonder. Jessica making love was every man’s carnal fantasy. Jessica in the aftermath of love made a man think of unfamiliar words like cherish. And forever.

  His smile fading, he rose and went to the bay window beside the bed. Pale light teased at the edges of the curtains. He made an opening with his finger and looked across the walled garden to the slate roofs of the mews, not expecting to see the Others and not seeing them.

  A bird announced the dawn. Another acknowledged the message.

  And then, a sound from the bed. A yawn, and a small sigh of pleasurable lassitude. Letting go the curtain, he turned to the bed and enjoyed the ballet of Jessica emerging from slumber.

  “You’ll have to marry me now,” he said.

  “Why?” She stretched, moving against the counterpane like a swimmer. “I didn’t, before.”

  “I didn’t ask you before. And during that time I took care, against your exuberance and every demand of nature, to make sure there would be no unwanted consequences. Tonight I was off guard, and you were unusually—”

  “I know.” She sat up, pushing her disheveled hair behind her ears. “Exuberant.”

  “Undeniably. But above all things, utterly splendid.”

  The shadow that had crept into her eyes vanished. “You always drive me mad,” she said. “And you needn’t worry, because it isn’t the proper time of the month for . . . consequences.”

  “Well, there’s many a man heard that song, followed nine months later by the wail of an infant. I’m sure you think it’s true,” he added quickly when she frowned. “But contraception by tracing a woman’s fertility cycle is notoriously unreliable.”

  The frown deepened. “You know this from experience?”

  “I presume you’re asking about little Durans scattered across the subcontinent, and the answer is, there are none I am aware of. I do take care, Jessica. And I’m not nearly so debauched as I should like to be.”

  “But then, who could be that debauched?” The humor returned to her eyes, although her lips were stern. “I’m surprised you are still here. Will someone come storming in to carry you off?”

  “I trust not. If the watchers are alert, they will have seen me at the window.” He sat on the edge of the bed, not far from that provocative garter. “I didn’t want you to wake up and find me gone. My departures seem to nettle you. But remaining may have compromised your reputation, unless there is a secret way out in broad daylight.”

  “Do you imagine I failed to consider that? When I left for High Tor, my secretary gave most of the servants a holiday, and only two or three have returned. She can call them together for instructions while you slip away.”

  “Miss Pryce knows? And approves?”

  “There’s no hiding anything from her, so I don’t bother to try. As for what she thinks, she either lets you know or she doesn’t. And about you, she didn’t. Why did that tiresome Mr. Garvey accuse you of treason?”

  The abrupt change of subject caught him off guard. It shouldn’t have done, being one of his own favorite tactics, but he might have erred by using it on Jessica. She was a quick study.

  And this was a question he preferred not to answer. As a diversion, he began to remove his shoes. “You heard it all,” he said, grinning at her over his shoulder. “My guess is frustration over bad investments and too much claret.”

  Jessica, unsurprised by the evasion, watched him while considering what next to do. Her world and her life teetered on the thin, untrustworthy wire of his disreputable past, the larcenous inclinations of his present, and his mysterious plans for the future. The only sure way to regain her balance was to jump off that wire and walk away.

  But she needed the man he was—morally flexible, criminally experienced, smarter and stronger than Gerald. She had overdue debts to pay, to those who had needed her help when she was too selfish to notice.

  But did she have the courage?

  She wasn’t sure. If she took this
path, there would be no turning back. Her fledgling business, which had only just tasted success, had been built on her integrity and dedication to her clients. Once she had lied to those who trusted her, set herself to cheat at least one of them, the foundation would crumble.

  She didn’t want to do this. Perhaps she wouldn’t. Probably she wouldn’t.

  Selfish, selfish, selfish.

  It wasn’t as if she’d be thrown on the streets to starve. Not an earl’s daughter, with a family who loved her in a begrudging way and would love her all the more if she conformed to their notions of propriety. Her father would be pleased to welcome her home, and Aubrey positively delirious at her failure. Jessica back in the fold where she belonged, behaving as she ought, taking orders from the men of the family who fed, clothed, and sheltered her.

  Within a year, she would be dead of boredom.

  Or perhaps none of it would come about. There was little point striking a deal with Duran if he had offended the powerful East India Company. The supposed threat from his valet was hogwash, she was sure, in spite of her new curiosity about Shivaji. But no one with a grain of sense made an enemy of the Beast. And if that model of chivalrous rectitude, the Archangel, uncovered evidence against Duran, then . . . Oh, nothing at all. By that time, Duran would be long gone.

  Now that she thought on it, his entire scheme had begun to unravel the moment Garvey recognized him. He must have hoped to sell the icon without calling attention to himself, which would explain why he refused to advertise it and why he wanted to take to the road, using her as cover and keeping himself out of the way of the authorities.

  Yes, a very good thing that Garvey had accosted them at Palazzo Neri. Without this piece of the puzzle, she might have convinced herself that Duran was speaking the truth. For a clear-sighted woman of business, she had a calamitous tendency to cling to illusions.

  Returning her attention to the master illusionist, she saw that he had removed his shoes, his jacket, and was about to pull off his shirt. That much temptation was more than she was prepared to resist.

  “I’m still waiting,” she said, realizing too late that it sounded like an invitation. “I mean, waiting for you to answer my question.”

  “I was hoping to distract you.”

  “Well, just stop it. Are you, in fact, a traitor?”

  With a grimace, he lowered himself again on the edge of the bed, facing a little away from her. She could see a muscle working at his jaw.

  “There was no treason. But I have offended the East India Company, and cost it money, and helped prevent incursions into parts of India that did not want it there. My only regret is failing to do more damage.”

  Although he had always been careful to reveal nothing of himself, now and again a bit of information had slipped through his screen. One of those bits nibbled at her memory. “Didn’t you once tell me your father had worked for the Company?”

  He gave a sharp crack of laughter. “Indeed he did. He quite literally gave his life to the job. Do I have to tell you about it?”

  “Yes.” She thought again. “No. I apologize. It isn’t my place to ask about your family.”

  “Your place? Ask what you will, Jessica. I’m perfectly capable of refusing to answer.”

  When he said nothing more, she presumed a refusal had been issued and immediately began casting about for a question he might attend to. There was so much she wanted to know. What was he hiding? Would she be sorry to learn the truth? Would he ever tell her the truth?

  “One way or another,” he said, startling her, “you always strip me naked.”

  And what did that mean? Another long silence, which she was afraid to break.

  “Any other way would be better than this.” His voice made her think of ashes falling on snow. “But someone ought to hear the story, I expect. I will soon be gone, and it’s certain that no one else remembers. Or cares.”

  He was on his feet then, in a spurt of the restless energy she understood all too well. In such a mood she never wished to be interrupted, so she banked pillows against the headboard and sat against them, waiting until he was ready to speak. It took less time than she’d expected.

  “My father was a younger son of a family with little money, but they saw him decently educated and helped him secure a position with the Company in London. It took a dozen years to save enough to marry his childhood sweetheart, and shortly after their wedding, the Company required him to take a post in Calcutta. My mother miscarried their first child aboard the outbound trader and her second two years later. She was, I am told, never in good health after that. My birth didn’t help.”

  He had been pacing, studying the floor, but at this point he glanced over at her. “The burdens on my father were considerable. Along with an ill and, I have to say, mentally distracted wife, he was cursed with a son bent on a career as a rogue. I appear to have fulfilled all his expectations.”

  The pacing resumed. “There were plenty of servants, of course, even for Company functionaries, but what my mother needed was a steady routine in familiar surroundings. Instead, by Company directive, the family was moved from post to post, each more primitive and remote than the last, until we found ourselves deep in territory besieged by the Marathas. Soon after, the other employees at the station were recalled, leaving my parents to ‘hold the castle for the Company.’ Those were the words in the dispatch. I know, because I later tracked down a copy in the Calcutta offices.”

  She couldn’t help herself. “Were you with them? And who precisely are the Marathas?”

  “A loose confederacy of ill-tempered tribes who kept themselves busy acquiring territory belonging to others when they weren’t fighting among themselves. And no, by then I had been sent off, very much against my will, to acquire polish and self-discipline at a new school established by the Governor-General in Calcutta. Meantime, my father wrote again and again to his superiors, begging to be removed from the station. There was no commerce possible, no profit to be had, nothing for him to do there. But the Company was determined to maintain its foothold—one clerk and his unstable wife—in the area. And father obeyed, because after twenty-seven years, he was so near to qualifying for his pension. With four hundred pounds a year, they could return to England and settle in the Derbyshire cottage my mother had always longed for. He endured until his pension was only a year away, but when nearby villages were being torched and the few detachments of the Company army still in the vicinity gone on the run, he sent an urgent plea for help. It was refused. Not long after, the compound was burned to the ground. Only two bodies were discovered in the rubble. The servants must have fled in time, but my mother was too frail, and my father would not have abandoned her.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she murmured under her breath, imagining more than she wished to know of what had happened.

  “The point is, the Honorable East India Company was perfectly content to have them die. It was, I later discovered, an unofficial policy to assign hard duty to employees on the verge of retirement. The fearful ones, at any rate, or those without resources or influence. If they quit, or failed to survive, their pensions need never be paid. And this,” he said in a rough voice, “is why I made it my business to play havoc with theirs.”

  “I have to know,” she said after a few moments. “What precisely did you do?”

  “First, I prepared. Fifteen and wild as a lynx, I lied about my age and wormed my way into the Company army.”

  The hard part must have been got through, Jessica thought, because he seemed more relaxed now. He stopped near the window long enough to crack the curtains and look outside, and when he began moving again, his pace was slower. “When I’d learned all I could about fighting in India, I resigned and carried my knowledge and experience elsewhere. The Marathas had long since had their teeth pulled, leaving the Company to devour, one by one, the small independent principalities of India. I hired myself to their rulers, supplying them weapons, training their armies, and if necessary, leading them into battl
e against Company troops. It rarely came to that. The Company generally preys on the weak and unprepared.”

  Stopping at the foot of the bed, his hands clasped behind his back, he gazed at her with somber eyes. “I have done a great many things I don’t wish ever to speak of, and made enemies among influential people, and have nothing whatever to show for thirty-five years of existence. Even so, the Honorable Directors will do no more than bluster at me. A trial would make public what they are at pains to conceal, and there are others making more mischief with the Company than I ever did. You needn’t be concerned.”

  “Well, you would say that, of course. I am not to worry my little head about matters reserved to men, which includes just about everything of interest or importance.”

  As she watched, a glint of mischief appeared in his eyes, along with something else she recognized. And wanted.

  “What an assertive, audacious, presumptuous creature you have become.” His head tilted to one side. “Are you ever submissive?”

  “Heavens, no. Why should I be?”

  “To get me to do what you wish me to do. I should rather like to see you play at being acquiescent. Or perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps you have been satisfied well enough already.”

  “I was, before. But this is now, and you are not mistaken. Even so, I do not care to play this sort of game. I have no talent for it.”

  “Unfortunate. I expect that with a little practice, you’d be quite adept at satisfying all my needs.”

  “I could . . . try.” She was having to force out the words. But resistant as she felt to what he proposed, she was also beginning to find it a little exciting. More than a little. “What shall I do?”

  “Can’t you guess? Really, these matters are better managed in a harem, where a man chooses from among many women the one to suit his mood.” He lowered himself onto the chair at the bottom of the bed, his legs stretched out before him, his long-fingered hands relaxed on the armrests. “Tell me why I should select you.”

  “Because I’m the only one here?”