The Passion of the Purple Plumeria

by Lauren Willig

  Not that the rubies weren’t very nice and all, but the ebony and silver of Gwen’s hair and the bronze of Lizzy’s were all the treasure William needed.

  “Here you are.” Gwen handed the string of beads back to Lizzy as nonchalantly as though they had been nothing but clay. “I believe these are yours.”

  Lizzy made a valiant effort at human speech. “You mean—all this time—”

  “You’ve been carrying around a rajah’s ransom in rubies,” said William grimly. “And what Jack was thinking, I don’t know.”

  “I have a good guess,” said Lord Richard. “He was probably thinking he was safer without those on his person.”

  “He wouldn’t have done it on purpose!” said Lizzy quickly. “Not that way. He must have assumed as long as I didn’t know, no one else would guess either. And I wouldn’t have guessed,” she added, looking at Gwen with a combination of respect and annoyance, “if you hadn’t thought to bash them into that wall.”

  “Thank you,” said Gwen regally.

  “The wallpaper,” said Lord Richard.

  “I never liked it anyway,” said Amy blithely. She turned back to the others. “But what about the rest of it? Not that the rubies aren’t lovely, but one strand doesn’t make a rajah’s hoard.”

  “Unless he was a very small rajah,” contributed Miles. “Metaphorically,” he added quickly. “I didn’t mean that he was a midget.”

  William broke in before anyone could pursue that interesting side angle. “Was there more that Jack sent?” he asked gently. “Or did you leave it behind at the school?”

  Agnes and Lizzy exchanged a long look.

  “There is more,” said Agnes hesitantly. “We bundled it all into our packs, in case we needed to trade something shiny for coin along the way.”

  A collective groan arose from the others.

  “I suppose,” said Agnes tentatively, “that it was a good thing I still had something left of my allowance?”

  Miles shook his head, one lock of blond hair flopping over his brow. “Can’t you just picture it? A rajah’s treasure spread out between the carters and innkeepers of Hampshire and Sussex.”

  “And Wiltshire,” pointed out Lizzy. She met her father’s eye and said, “Er, we’ll just get the rest of it now, shall we? Come along, Agnes.”

  Agnes followed dutifully.

  “I’ll go with them,” volunteered Amy, who followed along after.

  The rest of the group dispersed throughout the long salon. William joined Gwen at one of the windows, placing a hand familiarly on the small of her back.

  “I,” he said, in an undertone intended for her ears only, “am going to throttle Jack when I find him.”

  “It sounds like you’ll have to get in line,” said Gwen, leaning back into his hand. She raised her brows at him. “You have to admit, it was clever of the boy.”

  Pride warred with irritation. “Oh, he’s clever all right. I just wish he would show a bit more—”

  “Common sense?”

  “Concern for those around him.” The idea of Lizzy blithely trotting around the English countryside with a sack full of jewels made his blood run cold. What had the boy been thinking, sending them to her in the first place?

  “Well,” said Gwen practically. “He’s certainly done his best for his little sister. A place in an elite academy and a dowry anyone would envy.”

  “A dowry that made her the target of the governments of two countries,” countered William, a worried line between his brows. It felt good to have someone to confide in, someone to share his worries with. He’d missed this. “Jack had to know that someone would be after those jewels.”

  Gwen put her head to one side. “On the other hand,” she said judiciously, “he did a decent job of disguising the jewels. Your daughter herself didn’t realize she had them. And he did go to the trouble of setting a false trail with those other parcels.”

  “Yes,” said William wryly. “By sending them straight to Kat.”

  “Your Kat,” said Gwen firmly, “can handle herself against just about anything. I’d back her against those buffoons the Gardener had following us any day. And I’d imagine your Jack knows it. If he has the sense that God gave a duck.”

  William looked at her, at her elegant, strong-boned face, at the formidable poise that hid such a warm heart beneath. “You’ve a good heart, Gwen Meadows,” he said, “to advocate so for a boy you’ve not met yet.”

  “I’m simply speaking sense,” said Gwen, with dignity.

  William grinned at her. “It’s no use. I’ve sussed out your secret. You make yourself out to be so severe, but at heart, you’re as soft as I am.”

  “I wouldn’t say soft—” Gwen looked so appalled that William felt it incumbent upon himself to kiss her again.

  “Ahem!” Lizzy cleared her throat and then cleared it again. Entering the room, she dumped a clumsily wrapped cloth parcel on a rosewood card table. “I have the rest of the baubles Jack sent me. If anyone is still interested,” she added pointedly.

  “Twenty sword parasols,” said her father.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Lizzy. “Ten will do quite nicely. And a little pistol?”

  “Not after seeing your aim with those arrows,” said William.

  “I’ll practice with you,” offered Gwen, and it was all William could do not to kiss her again, right there. “Every woman should know how to use a pistol.”

  “And a sword parasol,” William said fondly.

  Lizzy rolled her eyes at Agnes and set about fanning out her loot on the table. Presented as it was, it was an unimpressive sight, the term “bazaar baubles,” if anything, doing the cheap trinkets too much honor. There were more of the heavy clay beads, clumsy brass bangles, and garish earrings of colored glass. There was a mirror too, gaudily adorned with all manner of bulbous brass work and chunks of rough colored stones.

  Lizzy shook out one last earring. “That’s the last of it,” she said cheerfully.

  Miles Dorrington cleared his throat. “It looks like your brother robbed a very unsuccessful jeweler.”

  Lady Henrietta rolled up her sleeves. “Shall we?”

  “Not against the wallpaper!” said Lord Richard quickly.

  Within an hour, the unprepossessing collection of bazaar trash was presenting quite a different aspect. As was the wallpaper, but only in a few spots, when Lord Richard wasn’t looking. The clay beads all had gems hidden in their centers: sapphire and emerald, ruby and topaz. The brass bangles, which tinkled so discordantly when shaken, carried a loose cargo of diamonds. The earrings Lizzy had confidently dismissed as colored glass were, in fact, rare yellow sapphires. As for the mirror, the elevated brass work hid the cream of the collection, loose gems too large to conceal in a clay bead, while the stones, once polished, revealed themselves as chunks of lapis lazuli and tourmaline.

  They all sat, exhausted, on the settees around the table with its glittering, illicit hoard.

  “Good Lord,” said William. “The boy’s gone and robbed Golconda.”

  “Not Golconda,” said Gwen, busily sorting gemstones into piles, like with like. “The Rajah of Berar.” She looked up. “There’s something missing.”

  Lady Henrietta surveyed the haul on the table. “Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds . . .”

  “The Moon of Berar.”

  “I’d thought that was a myth,” said William.

  Gwen looked up at him. “Bonaparte doesn’t think so. That’s why the Gardener was so hot to get his hands on these—and on your son.”

  Miles raised a hand. “What’s the Moon of Berar?”

  Gwen answered. “It’s a mythical jewel that supposedly has some sort of supernatural powers.”

  “No one can quite agree on what they are,” said William, picking up the tale. “Some say it provides the power of omniscience, others that it has the ability to provide one’s heart’s desire. In many versions . . .”

  His voice trailed off.

  “Yes?” prompt
ed Gwen.

  William reached out and picked up the mangled brass mirror. It was a sad-looking thing, with all the baubles picked off, the stones pried from their settings. Denuded of its borrowed finery, it was a trumpery piece, made of cheap brass and cheaper glass. Or not even glass. The reflected surface was wavy and dim.

  “In some versions,” he said, “the Moon is said to be a mirror.”

  “Not that mirror, surely,” said Miles Dorrington. “It looks like someone put it together by having an elephant stomp on a piece of brass and then called it done.”

  “Sometimes,” said William quietly, looking at Gwen, “valuable treasures hide under forbidding exteriors.”

  Gwen slid her hand into his. “Sometimes,” she said, “it just takes a clever man to see it.”

  William twined his fingers through hers, thanking the Fates that had thrown them together that day at Miss Climpson’s. “Not clever, but lucky. Very, very lucky.”

  “I suppose,” said Miles, looking dubiously at the mirror. “I wouldn’t want to overestimate my quotient of wisdom, but that still just looks like a mirror to me.”

  According to the legend, or at least one of the legends, the mirror displayed one’s ultimate desire. Looking down into the mirror, William saw both their faces reflected, his and Gwen’s. Lizzy, who had come up behind for a closer look, was just visible behind them, all nose and eyes in the mirror’s slightly distorted surface.

  William felt a welling of joy overtake him, a springtime of the soul that was everything anyone had ever promised him in an English spring. There was all the world before them, a lifetime of wonder and joy still to come.

  “I don’t know,” William said mildly, setting the mirror back down on the table. “I think it got it just about right.”

  And he knew, from Gwen’s quick sideways look, that she knew exactly what he meant.

  “Yes,” said Lady Henrietta practically, “but what are we to do with it?”

  “I could just go put it back in my room . . . ,” suggested Lizzy, making for the glittering pile.

  “I believe it counts as a spoil of war,” said Miles Dorrington. “Like a prize ship.”

  “In which case,” said Lord Richard, turning to William, “it belongs to your son.”

  “Who gave it to me,” said Lizzy quickly.

  “I helped carry it!” put in Agnes.

  “We’ll keep it for Jack,” said William, although even as he said it, he wondered how long, if ever, it would be until he saw his second son again.

  “Surely just one little necklace . . . ,” wheedled Lizzy. “It was my Christmas package, after all.”

  Gwen lightly squeezed William’s hand, and he looked up to find her watching him. She gave a little nod. “He’ll be back,” she said. “If only to make more trouble.”

  “We’re good at that, we Reids,” said William ruefully.

  Gwen rose from her seat and held out a hand to him. “Then it’s a good thing, isn’t it,” she said, “that I’m so good at rescuing you?”

  Chapter 26

  Sussex, 2004

  Selwick Hall looked as though it had been besieged.

  We stood there, Colin and Jeremy and I, among the shards of china, staring at the wreckage. A small table lay on its side, the flowers that had been so pretty in their vase strewn about the floor like Ophelia’s weeds. Behind us, the open front door banged in the wind.

  Colin hastily turned to secure it. The sound of the bolt clicking was as loud as a shot.

  “You can’t blame me for this one,” said Jeremy quickly.

  Colin’s expression was implacable. This was beyond anger. This was his home and it had been violated. “Unless you hired someone.”

  Jeremy was all outrage. “Do you really think—”

  “Tell me what else I’m supposed to think,” said Colin, his voice hard.

  Whatever Jeremy might have said was cut off by a loud crash from the back of the house, a crash and a bang, as though someone had gleefully tossed an entire tray of china in the air and then dropped the tray after it.

  Colin flinched as though he had been struck.

  “The bastard’s still here,” he said.

  “Couldn’t we just call the police and wait here?” I suggested hopefully.

  “He’ll be halfway to the next county by then,” said Colin with a tight-lipped determination that made me think of old Westerns on Sunday afternoon TV. Only this wasn’t a movie and Colin wasn’t Clint Eastwood. He was a reasonably mild-mannered former investment banker. Someone could get hurt, most likely Colin. “I’m going after him.”

  “Wait!” I grabbed up an umbrella from the umbrella stand. It was one of those sturdy British models built to last a thousand rains. More important, it had a sturdy steel tip. It might not be quite Miss Gwen’s sword parasol, but it was better than nothing. “Take this. Just in case.”

  Jeremy grabbed up an umbrella out of the stand. He hadn’t looked before he grabbed. It was hot pink with a ruffled edge. “I’m coming, too.”

  “Checking out your handiwork?” said Colin, edging down the hallway like James Bond on the trail of the villain with the nuclear reactor.

  “Screw you,” said Jeremy.

  Only he didn’t say “screw.” His knuckles were white on the umbrella handle, and there was sweat on his brow. Guilt, anger, fear, goodness only knew what, had made him lose his cool, and lose it in a big way.

  He raised the hot pink umbrella. “I’ve had enough of your—”

  I grabbed Jeremy’s arm and squeezed. Hard.

  “Save it for later, will you?” I hissed. “Both of you. Villain first. Fighting later.”

  The glance Jeremy cast me wasn’t exactly fond, but he complied, ostentatiously rubbing his arm.

  In the darkness, the familiar corridors felt like something out of a horror movie, rendered unfamiliar by the toppled tables and shattered vases, unspeakable dangers lying in wait around corners that didn’t seem to curve quite where they should. The doorframes loomed like the menacing portals in one of Poe’s dark fantasies, and the familiar creak of the floorboards echoed in my ears, making me hunch my shoulders and glance anxiously behind me.

  Not that behind was the problem. Whatever the danger was lay ahead. Colin led the way, his umbrella held aloft, Jeremy next, while I took up the rear, where I could keep an eye on Jeremy.

  The trail of destruction led to the back of the house, to the long salon that stretched across the garden front. Despite the depredations of the Victorian improvers who had remodeled much of the house out of recognition, that room had remained pretty much the same since the eighteenth century, aside from the addition of a conservatory on one side that sprouted from the side of the house like a toadstool.

  Moonlight played against the long glass windows, making the glass seem to sway and shimmer. Was that someone moving by the French doors? No. Just a curtain, wafting back and forth in one of those strange breezes that came out of nowhere. Colin swore they were just from ill-fitting window frames, not ghosts.

  Colin said a lot of things. In the moonlight, in the dark room, our own fear a palpable presence among us, ghosties and ghoulies and things that went bump in the night seemed entirely logical.

  “The door is still locked,” said Colin in a low voice. “He must be in here somewhere.”

  Those are words you only want to hear in a movie, with a bowl of popcorn on your lap and an afghan tucked around your knees.

  I turned, slowly. Moonlight and shadow played tricks with my eyes. In the corner of the room, something moved.

  “Over there,” I whispered hoarsely, clutching at Colin’s arm and missing by a mile.

  Everything happened at once. The villain made a desperate leap for freedom. Jeremy ran forward, swinging his umbrella. Colin flicked on the light.

  In the sudden glow, Jeremy batted at empty air with his umbrella. Colin pivoted, saying, “Where did he go? Where did he go?”

  And I sat down hard on the floor, shaking with slightly
hysterical laughter.

  “Boys. Boys!” I had a little trouble getting the words out. I pointed, shakily, at the rosewood card table in front of me, which was rocking lightly back and forth. “I think I’ve found the culprit.”

  Cowering under the table was a large black dog, his coat matted with mud and burrs.

  Colin and Jeremy stood there, blinking like idiots, still holding their umbrellas, while the source of all our worries hunkered down and rubbed his nose against his paw, letting out a low, unhappy whimper.

  I knew just how he felt.

  “It’s that lost dog,” I said unnecessarily. My voice sounded very shrill and very loud. “Didn’t you see the posters in the pub? We should call the pub and find out who the owner is.”

  Colin hunkered down next to me. “Come on,” he urged, patting his thigh. To the humans, he said, “We must have left the door unlocked. The catch doesn’t always catch.”

  Jeremy lowered his umbrella. “Not our finest hour.”

  “No,” Colin agreed, and I knew he was thinking of more than the latch. He looked soberly at Jeremy. “I owe you an apology.”

  I clambered unsteadily to my feet. “I’ll go call the pub.”

  The cousins needed some time alone. I only hoped they wouldn’t revert to form and bludgeon each other while I was gone. I took some comfort from the reflection that if Jeremy were to go after Colin, those ruffles on the pink umbrella should cushion the blow.

  Skirting the destruction in the hall—that poor dog must have really been frantic, and who could blame him?—I made my way to the kitchen. The number of the pub was on a frayed piece of paper by the phone, along with such other important numbers as the fire station, the oil company, and the Indian takeaway.

  The people at the pub were only too happy to hear that Fuzzy had been found. They promised they would call the owner and let her know. I hung up the phone with mutual expressions of esteem, repressed the urge to call back and ask if they delivered gin and tonics, and spent a few minutes contemplating my own reflection in the kitchen window, trying to make sense of a decidedly tumultuous evening.