by Liz Carlyle
Not knowing what to say, Anisha instead watched through the window as their little caravan wound its way through streets that alternated from dark and narrow to wide and elegant. Never in her life had she seen so many church spires, and as they progressed, the streets were increasingly choked with traffic and people. At every turn, one could observe wagons and carts being offloaded and doorsteps being swept as the banks and storefronts of London opened to embrace the day’s commerce.
Inexplicably, however, Anisha’s new home could not hold her attention, and her gaze drifted back to her companion. Dressed more for a ride in the country than a drive, Welham was a large, long-legged man with few pretensions to sartorial splendor. He wore a snugly cut coat of black superfine—but not so snug as to have required the assistance of a valet. His high boots and breeches showed his muscular legs to quite good effect, though Anisha suspected trousers might have been the more fashionable choice.
In fact, the only hint of elegance about Welham was a charcoal silk waistcoat with tortoise shell buttons, a blindingly white cravat, and the tall black hat lying beside him. And when he twitched back his coat to extract his pocket watch, Anisha could see the lean turn of his waist and almost sense the strength that lay beneath his sleeve.
Rance Welham was, Anisha concluded, a man’s man—which regrettably made him all the more intriguing.
After checking the time and tucking the watch away, he relaxed against the seat, one arm draped across the back of the banquette, his booted legs set wide such that he seemed to own every inch of space around him. He dipped his head to the window, one lock of dark hair falling over his forehead as his quick gaze swept the streets beyond his carriage window. The whole of Welham’s demeanor left Anisha with the vague sense that the man missed little and was intimidated by less than that.
She searched her mind for what else her brother had said of him. Welham descended from a wealthy family in the north of England, but his mother had been a Border Scot. Raju and Welham had met perhaps four or five years earlier in Morocco—or was it Algiers?—but doing what, precisely, her brother had declined to say. Something not fit for a lady’s ears, Anisha gathered, for at some point in their checkered history together, Raju had come to realize that both he and Welham bore the mark of the Guardian.
And thus had their inseparability begun.
The mark was most commonly etched high on the left hip, to indicate that a man had been chosen by his family—by dint of temperament, tradition, and the alignment of the heavens—as a Guardian of the Old and Noble Order of the Fraternitas Aureae Crucis. Part religious order and part secret society, the Fraternitas was ostensibly devoted to the study of natural philosophy and its connection to the great Greek and Druidic mysteries.
Guardians served as the protective arm of the society, like Christian soldiers sworn to the sword. The mark itself was simply a Latin cross positioned above a crossed quill and sword. Sometimes, if the family descended through the Scottish line, their mark would be enclosed in a thistle cartouche. The symbol in both forms was common, hidden in plain sight on pediments, crests, and gravestones all across Europe, much like the fleur-de-lis.
The Fraternitas had roots, it was whispered, in the ancient Celtic world and the Christian Templar tradition, perhaps even a vague connection to Masonry. Vague seemed to be the operative word when it came to the organization. Nonetheless, Anisha’s father had belonged, as had generations of Forsythes before him.
But none of this mattered, really, to Anisha. Her children had not been born in the Sign of Fire and War. They could be initiated into the F.A.C. in some intellectual, legal, or religious capacity should they wish—a Savant, an Advocati, or a Preost—but her sons would never be Guardians.
Never would they be cursed with the Gift, thank God.
No, her sons would never have need of a Guardian. It was a small blessing for which Anisha was deeply thankful.
She must have sighed, for she realized that Sergeant Welham was staring at her across the depths of the carriage, his once-sparkling eyes now sharply focused, as if he had been ruminating over something and did not much care for the conclusion he had drawn.
“That fellow on the corner,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “This whole business, really—it doubtless makes you wonder why your brother sent me, of all people, to fetch you. Indeed, I advised him to send someone else, but—”
Almost without thinking, Anisha reached through the shadows to set a gloved finger to his lips, her expression lightly chiding. “But it is you whom he most trusts,” she said quietly. “And so it is you whom I most trust.”
His answering smile was muted. “I believe, though, that Ruthveyn hopes you will take here in Town, Lady Anisha,” he said. “I rather doubt your being seen in my company will serve that cause—and I told him so.”
“I beg your pardon? Take what?”
He smiled again, but this time it did not reach his eyes. “Ruthveyn desires you to make the proper social connections,” he clarified, “and forge a new and happy life for yourself here in London. He is determined, I collect, that you will marry again, so my company is not ideally—”
Anisha went perfectly rigid. “I beg your pardon?”
Welham’s expression stiffened. “Sorry, I put that boorishly—I’m too plainspoken, you’ll find—but I daresay you’ll hear the same hope from his lips within the week.”
Anisha drew a deep, steadying breath. “Shall I?” she said stiffly. “And tell me, sir—has my brother chosen this new husband as yet?”
At that, Welham’s eyes widened. Then, as he apparently recognized her pique for what it was, his smile returned, the tiny lines about his brilliant blue eyes crinkling once again. “I believe, ma’am, that he does in fact have one or two candidates in mind,” he murmured. “And I can already see that you will be perfectly content to leave the matter in his capable hands.”
“Oh, perfectly,” she said sweetly. “And I, in turn, shall be equally happy to assist him. Indeed, having scarcely laid eyes on the man in the last five years—and knowing absolutely nothing of his life here, nor of his wishes nor of his hopes or his dreams—I am utterly certain that his widowhood cannot suit him.”
“Lady Anisha, forgive me.” His gaze sobered. “I ought not suggest—”
“No, no, suggest away,” she cut in, her voice shrill. “I mean to do precisely that. Why, there must be at least two dozen simpering English roses willing to hang on every pearl of my brother’s wisdom, and tell him what a charming devil he is, all in exchange for a countess’s coronet and his fat fortune. And trust me, Sergeant Welham, I shall manage to ingratiate myself with each and every one of them should my brother dare fling me out into his so-called English society.”
“Shall you, indeed?” he said.
“Never doubt it,” she returned. “And then I shall bring them home in turn to dinner until hell freezes over. But whilst waiting for that happy occasion, I shall turn my attention to his bad habits. His womanizing. His drunkenness. His habitual use of opiates. No, Sergeant Welham, Ruthveyn’s secrets do not escape me. Indeed, I shall be perfectly relentless in my pursuit of his self-improvement. What do you think of that? Will it make his life happier, do you imagine?”
But Sergeant Welham no longer looked quite so relaxed or sanguine upon his banquette. “Good Lord!” he murmured.
“And what of yourself?” she asked, cocking her head to one side. “Perhaps you, too, could benefit by my help?”
“Oh, I think not,” he demurred. “Though I thank you, ma’am, for offering.”
“Quite sure, are you?”
“Quite, yes,” he answered. “And now, ma’am, if you will look to your left, you can see the Tower of London.”
“Thank you,” she said tartly. “But I have no interest whatever in tourist attractions.”
“Hmm.”
Then Welham simply set his hat back on his head and tipped it forward over his eyes.
Anisha forced her gaze to the window and watched
the grim gray walls go flying past. They rumbled on in silence for some time, through the seemingly endless quagmire of streets, until Welham actually began to snore quietly.
She glanced across the carriage in exasperation. His chin had fallen to his chest, and his fingers were interlaced over his waistcoat. Really, how could he sleep? And how irritatingly large London was! Were they never to arrive at wherever it was they meant to go? Impatience bit like a horsefly at the back of her neck.
Then she realized, suddenly, the obvious. That she had just shot the messenger and now burned to sink her claws into the arrogant ass that had sent him.
“Sergeant Welham,” she said a little loudly.
“Umph—?” His head jerked up, his elegant hat tumbling onto his lap. “We there?”
“No, I merely wish to beg your pardon,” she said. “I spoke wrongly. I’m angry with my brother. And you have been all kindness. I am sorry.”
“Hmm,” he said again, slapping the hat back on.
“Now this lovely old church we are passing,” she said, “what is it called?”
“Oh, overdone, my dear,” he said darkly. “You have no interest in tourist attractions, I seem to recall.”
She blinked her eyes twice, slowly. “I see you do not mean to let me out of this graciously,” she said. “I deserve it, I daresay.”
“St. Clement, then.” His voice was gruff. “It is called St. Clement Danes.”
“And would it be your church?” she asked conversationally.
“Lord, no.” He lifted both his dark, slashing eyebrows. “Besides, London has a thousand, and I haven’t darkened a church door in . . . aye, well, I don’t know how long.” Suddenly, his shoulders fell, and he scrubbed a hand almost pensively around his jaw. “I will do, though, before long, I fear. And far too soon, at that.”
Anisha realized at once what he was speaking of. Welham’s father, Raju had written, was dying.
“I was sorry to hear about your father,” she murmured. “My brother’s last letter reached me in Lisbon. He said the Earl of Lazonby’s health had collapsed.”
“Aye, broken down by his years of suffering,” said Welham grimly, “and his unrelenting efforts to get my conviction overturned.”
“I am so very sorry,” she said again. “Raju says the title will go to you. I’m sure you take no pleasure in it.”
“Aye, but I shall have a few more months, if God is kind,” he said, his eyes no longer smiling. “And no, I take no pleasure whatever from it. He is scarcely sixty, and now we’re both to be cheated of his last years—and someone, eventually, is going to pay for it.”
Anisha had no answer to that. Moreover, she had no doubt he meant it. Welham looked like a man who made promises, not idle threats.
Welham turned his gaze to the window, staring out almost blindly. With the wintery light casting a shadow beneath his cleanly chiseled cheekbone, his profile held such a stark, hard beauty she scarcely recognized the laughing man who had stepped into her cabin this morning. And that mouth—oh, that lush, lovely mouth! It was the only thing that softened him; saved him, perhaps.
Ruthlessly, Anisha forced her gaze away, heat rushing over her. Good Lord, she was not some grass-green goose of a girl to be swayed by a man, no matter his rugged good looks—and she sensed enough of human nature to recognize torment and trouble when she saw it in the flesh.
She turned to the opposite window and tried to think of what was to come. It was spitting an icy rain now, the promise of the pink sunrise having turned to leaden skies with a wind that thrashed the bare tree branches and whistled through the carriage door. Suddenly her vague longing for India turned into a bone-deep ache, and she was terrified she had made an irrevocable mistake.
The dread had not lifted when, just a few minutes later, the vehicle slowed to a halt, drawing between a pair of massive, lamped gateposts and round the semicircular drive of a grand, porticoed mansion set a little back from the street. Reluctantly, she picked up her reticule, then drew her cloak a little tighter, as if doing so might ward off the inevitable.
Carrying somber black umbrellas, a trio of liveried servants came in lockstep down the sweeping staircase, putting Anisha a little in mind of a firing squad. Her trepidation must have sketched across her face, for at once Rance Welham caught her hand and carried it to his lips.
“Courage, my dear,” he said softly. “Your brother awaits. Your new life awaits. And you have all of two months before the London Season begins.”
She felt her eyes widen. “The London Season?”
“At which time you will set society on its ear with your beauty,” he went on, his smile firmly back in place.
For an instant, she hesitated. “Sergeant Welham,” she finally said, drawing her hand from his, “let us be realistic, even if my brother cannot. London society will tolerate me, yes. But they will have about as much real interest in a mixed-blood army widow as I shall have in them.”
“I would not have thought you such a coward, Lady Anisha,” he said, his smile muted.
“I am not—” She exhaled sharply, crushing her reticule to her lap with both hands. “I am not a coward, Sergeant,” she finally said. “I am just . . . different. That is all.”
“Just different?” he softly echoed. “Oh, aye, my dear. Now that you surely are.”
But Welham’s brilliant blue eyes were once again smiling, his true nature once again hidden.
Chapter 2
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have passed . . .
William Shakespeare, Othello
As so often happens with most of life’s dreaded changes, what felt at first to Lady Anisha like an almost intolerable upheaval became quickly drowned out by a bucket brigade of small, day-to-day disasters. There were tutors and maids and music masters to hire. Tom and Teddy required cloaks, coats, and all manner of woolens to ward off the frightful English chill. The crate containing the boys’ pressed leaf collection and Encyclopedia Britannica had vanished into thin air. The bird did not like Raju’s cats.
The cats, on the other hand, liked the bird very well indeed.
And then there were Raju’s bullheaded notions of society and marriage to be dispensed with—a notion that Anisha did not, perhaps, crush as thoroughly or as ruthlessly as she ought to have done. . . .
Still, for good or ill, London blew over her like a Bengali cyclone, beginning the moment Rance Welham handed her down from his carriage, leaving Anisha little time to fret, or even to mourn her beloved home, and she soon became, if not inured to her new life, then at least accustomed to it—all while scarcely realizing the change was occurring.
And in this way, winter turned to spring and summer to autumn, until one day Lady Anisha awoke to realize her first year in London had long since passed, and with it, much of the storm. The boys had fallen into something like a routine. Lucan had fallen in with a cadre of dashing young blades—and their raffish ways. After despairing of Lucan and throwing up his hands, Raju had shocked everyone by falling in love with the boys’ governess.
And Anisha—well, fool that she was, she had fallen just a little bit in lust with Rance Welham, the newly invested Earl of Lazonby.
But it was so very hard not to when his eyes were so teasing, his smile so enigmatic, and his hidden depths so intriguingly beyond her reach. And he was—just as he’d professed—an incorrigible flirt, at least outwardly. A dozen times Anisha had entertained the notion of something more than mere flirtation, but each time womanly instinct had warned her away.
And then had come that day, some months past, when she’d come upon him unawares and realized with a stark and sudden clarity that perhaps her instincts had warned her away for a very good reason. That perhaps his flirtations really were meaningless; his depths farther beyond her reach than even she had imagined.
Lazonby was thirty-five years old, and there was no woman in his life—nor had there ever been, so far as she knew. And Anisha had begun to wonder if sh
e now understood why; if perhaps his passions drove him in an altogether different direction.
But it almost didn’t matter, for he was her brother’s dearest friend—and her friend, too. More than friendship, however? No. Lord Lazonby was too closed off inside; too obsessed with his mad, furious notions of truth and revenge. And Anisha was wise enough to know a façade when she saw one; wise enough to know that on some level, she really didn’t know him at all, and likely never would.
So Anisha had looked about for something to distract her from those dancing, devilish eyes. And as a result, she had proceeded to do what she now feared was a very foolish thing. She had listened to her brother.
She had done precisely what she’d told Lazonby she would not do.
Irritated by the recollection, Anisha plopped a huge pat of butter in the middle of her kedgeree. The fact that she did not particularly like the dish—and certainly never added extra butter—seemed this morning to have escaped her. She stabbed into it with a vicious relish.
At the opposite side of the breakfast table, Lucan lowered his head and eyed her warily across his eggs. After cutting him a decidedly irritated glance—perhaps the third or fourth of the morning—Anisha began to chew. A small part of her was angry; not with him but with Raju.
She had come here in large part for Lucan’s sake, so that their elder might give the young man a bit of gentlemanly direction—or at least a hard boot in the arse. Now here she was in London, still staring at Luc over breakfast, and Raju was off on a months-long wedding trip.
So today was decidedly not the day for Lucan to ask for money.
Again.
But he had.
Men, she had begun to believe, were nothing but a plague.
But Lucan was still looking at her across the breakfast table from beneath his sweep of long, almost feminine eyelashes. Lady Anisha slammed down her fork with an ominous clatter.
“Stop it, Luc,” she warned. “Do not dare look at me with those great, pitiful eyes. I shan’t do it, I tell you. Just because Raju has gone abroad does not mean I have suddenly lost my spine, for I quite assure you I did not need him to shore it up. I am quite put out with you all on my own.”
