The Bride Wore Pearls

by Liz Carlyle

  But Tom was no longer ill, not seriously, that much was apparent—and at the grand old age of seven, no longer very wee, much as it pained his mother to admit it. And Janet was right. It was time for the boy to begin eating. So when the front bell rang an hour later, bringing a message from Whitehall to say that the assistant commissioner would be pleased to see Anisha at her convenience, there was no further excuse for ignoring what she had vowed to do—and no more subduing her curiosity, either.

  And it was Rance’s murder conviction, she reassured herself, that she was curious about. That hot, penetrating emotion in Royden Napier’s eyes when they swept over her did not intrigue Anisha in the least.

  It was, however, a bit of a balm to her wounded psyche.

  So leaving Tom in Janet’s capable hands, she put on her favorite amber carriage dress, then wrapped her hair and shoulders with a black and gold paisley shawl, stuffed one of Raju’s folios full of blank paper, and ordered the big traveling coach brought round.

  The building known colloquially as “Number Four” was unchanged from her first visit, still rank with the smell of overcooked cabbage, moldering ledgers, and unwashed bodies. This time, at least, the front porter was on duty.

  After glancing at her obviously expensive, if slightly untraditional, attire, he apparently judged her worthy and waved her up the creaking, badly lit stairs to the second floor. There she strode to the rear of the building to wait in one of the stiff oak chairs under the sidelong gazes of Napier’s clerks, who resembled nothing so much as a brace of black crows perched upon a pair of gateposts.

  The wait seemed interminable but was in reality less than an hour, for she could hear the clock at St. Martins-in-the-Field striking, the faintly mournful sounds carrying on the sharp spring air.

  From time to time, one of the crows sailed down from his tall stool to flit about the office, pecking at this and that before hopping up on his perch again. In the Great Scotland Yard behind Number Four, Anisha could hear through the open windows as the occasional cart rumbled in, bringing criminal suspects, perhaps, to appear before the magistrate, for twice there was a slight hue and cry followed by the rattle of chains in the courtyard below.

  After a while, Anisha tuned all of it out, closed her eyes, and focused instead on willing the tension from her body. It was a learned skill; one that helped her maintain balance and order through life’s tribulations. And in time, as it always did, the strain left with her breath, and a quiet peace flowed through her.

  But mere moments later, Napier’s hinges creaked and the peace was lost again.

  A dapper, dark-clad gentleman with a black satchel stepped out—a young barrister, perhaps—and, after dropping Anisha a long, passing glance, strode out of the room and down the dark passageway.

  Anisha looked round to see Napier glaring at her—at least glare was the word that first sprang to mind—his feet set wide upon the threshold. “Lady Anisha Stafford.” His voice, always low, was pitched even lower. “You wished to see me.”

  Anisha rose, seizing her folio. “Indeed, if you’ve time.”

  A bitter smile twisted at his lips. “For Lord Ruthveyn’s sister?” he murmured, moving to hold open the door. “Were I to ask our Lady the Queen, she would doubtless assure me I have all the time in the world for such a task.”

  Anisha felt her temper ratchet up again, but she held her tongue and swished past him. As soon as the door shut, however, she laid the folio on the edge of Napier’s desk and turned to face him. “Let us understand one another,” she said as sweetly as she could muster. “I am not a task. I did not ask the Queen’s favor. I can assure you my brother did not. You promised, all on your own, to allow me to read through Peveril’s murder file.”

  “No, task is entirely the wrong word for you, Lady Anisha,” he quietly interjected. “On that, I stand corrected. But there. I have interrupted your diatribe, I collect. Pray continue.”

  Napier’s hands appeared to be clasped behind his back. His posture was rigid, his eyes dark with what looked like unspoken anger and, if she guessed aright, taking in her every inch.

  Pushing the cashmere shawl back from her hair, she swept past him to the open window, suddenly in need of air. “All I am saying,” she answered, setting one hand on the sill, “is that if you mean now to renege on what was offered, kindly say so. I do not need another lecture—not from you—on my brother’s influence, nor on Lazonby’s culpability. By no one’s definition has the man been an angel.”

  Until he set his hand over hers, Anisha hadn’t realized Napier had followed her to the window. “I beg your pardon, Lady Anisha,” he said quietly, “but it is hard to watch you obsessed by this vile business. Especially when Lazonby, I fear, is not worthy of your regard.”

  She turned then, eyes blazing. “Indeed, I hold Lazonby in the highest regard,” she retorted, “but that does not make me any more blind to his faults than I am blind to yours.”

  He had withdrawn his hand at once. Now his smile curled almost indolently. “Have I a great many faults, then, my lady?” he asked. “And would you care to enumerate them for me?”

  “It would be a short but grave conversation, sir.”

  “By all means,” he murmured, his eyes drifting over her face, “indulge me.”

  Anisha considered it only a moment. “The Vedas—the Hindu Holy Scriptures—teach us the story of Yajnavalka, who became so wrapped in his own certainty, he dared challenge the knowledge of his guru, his teacher, and was driven from the learned fold,” she said. “It is the Hindu way of saying, I suppose, that pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

  “Ah. And so I am prideful.” Napier’s voice was soft. “Or is it haughty?”

  “Is there a difference?” she asked. “I confess, my English is not always as nuanced as one might wish.”

  Napier shocked her then by laughing; one deep, loud bark which sounded wholly undignified—this from a man who was, so far as Anisha had seen, the very embodiment of dignity. “Oh, come now, Lady Anisha,” he said. “Your English—faintly lilting though it may be—is about as imprecise as a surgeon’s blade. But do go on. You were punishing me, I think?”

  “And you seemed to be taking a perverse sort of pleasure in it,” she replied, her gaze running down him. “There are men who do, I’m told. Though I would not have taken you for one of them.”

  Napier lifted one slashing, dark eyebrow. “Indeed not, my lady,” he said. “I prefer to take my pleasure in quite another way. But like any man who earns his crust in government service, I am hardened to criticism. Fire at will.”

  Anisha lifted her chin. “Very well, then, yes, you are prideful,” she said. “And if you don’t have a care, it will be your downfall. Humility, even a little, can bind us together. But pride can only blind us—particularly to our own faults. Like Yajnavalka, you possess great knowledge, but as yet, little wisdom. You cannot see beyond your own assumptions.”

  This he seemed to ponder seriously, at least for a moment. “And what would you have me do?”

  “Open your knowledge to me,” she said, tossing one hand in the direction of his desk. “Do what you have promised. That is, after all, the Peveril file open upon your desk, is it not? I saw it, you see, when I laid down my folio.”

  He fell silent for a moment, his gaze turning inward. “You are quite as clever as your brother Ruthveyn, I think, Lady Anisha,” he murmured, “but a good deal more subtle.”

  When she said nothing, he merely watched her for a time, the mood in the room oddly shifting. “You are in love with him, aren’t you?” he finally asked. “With Lord Lazonby.”

  For an instant, Anisha could not hold Napier’s gaze.

  He had suggested as much, though less bluntly, when she had come here with Rance that first time. And she had asked him—quite bluntly, once Rance had been tossed out on his ear—why he’d never stopped looking at her.

  He had not answered. But it had had nothing to do, she was quite certain,
with the security of her brother’s silver. Napier wanted her. And at the time, she had wanted to make him say it, for reasons she had not fully understood.

  Perhaps she had been searching for a balm to her wounded female pride. Or perhaps she had fleetingly toyed with the notion of an affaire. She was not sure now. But she was sure, if he asked, what her answer would be. Her heart had flown—traitorous organ that it was—and trying to imagine herself with anyone save Rance was just an exercise in futility.

  She should have been thrilled at Napier’s interest. Indeed, she was a fool for not pursuing him. He was a captivating man. And she—well, she had been alone for a very long time, and lonely for longer than that.

  She believed Napier misguided and Rance stubborn. But it was also remotely possible that Napier had utterly deceived her; deceived her about all of this—his desire, his honesty, and his true intent in helping her—and done it so cleverly that she had failed to sense it. She thought not. But only a fool would fail to question such a man’s motivations.

  He broke the silence with a long sigh, his chin down, his hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets, almost as if he had forgotten her presence. The afternoon sun shone upon him through the tall window that overlooked the yard, casting a gloss over his neat, dark hair, and setting his gold watch chain ablaze. His nose did indeed have a decided hook, and his eyes were more piercing than warm. And yet he was not unhandsome.

  Anisha cleared her throat, bestirring him from his apparent reverie.

  He lifted those hard eyes to hers again, but this time they had softened a little. “I had heard, after our last meeting, that you were to be married,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

  “Did you?” she said sharply. “To whom?”

  But she knew the answer to that.

  “To Lord Bessett,” he said. “And frankly, of all the gentlemen in the St. James Society—however suspicious I am of the whole lot—in Bessett there is much to be admired. It would have been . . . easier, somehow.”

  “Easier?” She moved slowly toward him. “Easier in what way?”

  She had the satisfaction of seeing his face color faintly. “Will you make me answer that question, Lady Anisha?” he asked softly. “I think you know I hold you in the highest regard—and you also think, no doubt, that I have looked too high in my admirations.”

  “Why do the English always say ‘no doubt’ so frequently and so authoritatively?” Anisha murmured. “Especially when there is every doubt? You cannot know what I think.”

  “Perhaps not,” he conceded. “But I daresay you do know what I think—and fairly precisely, I fear.”

  Anisha could only stare at him for a moment, for his supposition was not in the least rhetorical. “Is that what all this honesty is about?” she murmured. “Do you imagine I . . . well, that I am like Lord Ruthveyn? That I know things even when they remain unsaid?”

  “I find your brother unnerving,” Napier confessed. “He makes my hair stand on end, to be honest.”

  “Much of the time, my brother is a mystery to me,” she said truthfully. “But I am perfectly ordinary, I assure you.”

  “Oh, hardly that!” he interjected.

  “And if I know what you are thinking,” she continued, “it is with a woman’s intuition, and no more. You say I must think you look too high. I say you pay me a great compliment by looking at all. You say you esteem me. But I would say you scarcely know me.”

  His smile was muted. “True, but it seems not to matter,” he replied. “And you, I daresay, are using that fact to get what you want. Or Lazonby is. But oddly enough, I almost do not mind. It shames me a little to say that I could be so weak.”

  Anisha could only respond honestly. “Perhaps I am using you,” she admitted. “But as arrogant as I find you, I do find your company oddly refreshing. Should you choose to renege on your offer, Mr. Napier, we will part as friends.”

  “Will we?” he interjected, his smile doubtful.

  “We will,” she said more firmly. “And no, as you’ve likely concluded, I am not to be married. But Lord Bessett is. My brother may have longed to see us make a match of it, but that was mere wishful thinking on his part.”

  “And so we are back to Lord Lazonby,” he said quietly.

  “I suppose we are,” she finally answered.

  “Have you . . . any sort of understanding with him?”

  “That is really none of your business,” said Anisha, “but no, I have not.”

  “But you still wish to see his case files?”

  “I wish to see the files in the murder of Lord Percy Peveril,” she corrected, “as we discussed some days past. Now, may I?”

  His eyes warmed a little dangerously. “Yes,” he said. “For a price.”

  “What sort of price?”

  “An evening of your company,” he said.

  Anisha narrowed her gaze. “Are you doing this to make Lazonby jealous? It won’t work, you know. Most days I wonder he knows I’m alive.”

  Napier shrugged. “Then both of you are fools,” he said. “But no, I am doing it because you intrigue me. I am doing it because I would like to spend an evening in your company.”

  “An evening?” she asked guardedly. “Or a night? For the latter, I assure you, will not happen.”

  The warmth in his eyes deepened to near merriment. “A night—?” he murmured. “Well. That would be looking high indeed, my lady.”

  Anisha felt her cheeks flush. “Very well, you ask only for an evening,” she acknowledged. “May it be a night of my choosing? With no constraints or preconditions?”

  This time, he hesitated. “Yes,” he slowly answered.

  “Then will you agree to dine with me?” she asked. “In my home, tomorrow night?”

  He blinked once before answering. “Very well, yes. There, are you pleased, Lady Anisha? It appears I am at your command.”

  “Lovely,” she said. “Come at six. I think you know the address. Now, may I have two hours with that fat file upon your desk?”

  “Pray make yourself at home.” Napier waved toward the desk with a flourish. “Sir George is expecting me at the Home Office for a meeting. In the meantime, I shall instruct my clerks to leave you undisturbed.”

  “Thank you.” With that, Anisha went to the desk and began to unwind the cashmere wrap.

  Napier, however, followed her. “And Lady Anisha?” His hand shot out to seize her wrist—gently, but very firmly. “You are welcome to copy anything you like from that file. But if you dare take anything—anything—I will know it. And I reserve the right to search your person before you leave.”

  Anisha could only look at him and nod.

  Lazonby leaned back against the rough-hewn tavern bench and quaffed the first inch of a stout porter, sucking down the foam along with it, his gaze focused sharply through the front window. The rumble of noonday conversation around him had been pushed to the far reaches of his mind, for a stone cottage some thirty yards down the lane held the whole of his attention.

  The house was large for a cottage, with six windows up and two bow windows down, a front door painted glossy blue, and a wide garden gate arched over with a tangle of climbing rose. Situated directly in the sun as it was, and the season approaching late May, the bramble was already dotted with tight, green buds so small one’s eye had to search, very near, in order to see them.

  It would be a white rose, he thought, when the blooms burst.

  White like the trim round the cottage’s windows and the little vine-covered pergola round back. He had seen that, too, several days past when he’d trailed Coldwater up to the village, then crouched by the rose bush until dusk so that he might climb over the high garden wall. There the white paint had been so fresh that even now he could smell the sharp stench of it in his nostrils.

  That’s how it was with white. It was a deceptive color. The color of priests and purity and that new peculiarity, wedding gowns. And yet it was also the color of burial shrouds, of cumulous clouds he
avy with rain, and of quaking, cowardly surrender.

  Himself, he’d never waved the white flag. Not in battle. Not in life. And the shroud? That, too, he’d somehow avoided. But he’d sure as hell been rained on, literally and metaphorically.

  He’d been rained on, in fact, today—around four in the morning, when he had returned home not from a night of carousing but from cracking the lock on Coldwater’s third-floor office. It had been a bit of a trick, that. And yielded him nothing. Coldwater’s desk at the Chronicle was that of a wraith; absent anything that told of the man’s character.

  “Bangers and mash!”

  This pronouncement was punctuated by the thunk! of heavy crockery striking the oak tabletop.

  He looked up to see the serving girl staring at him, her plain face fixed in an equally bland expression, a thick cloth held limply in one hand.

  “Thank you,” he said, flashing a wide grin. “Smells delicious.”

  Finally a soft smile curled her mouth. “Oh, ’tis good, sir,” she confirmed, tilting her head at his nearly full glass. “Fetch you another?”

  “Ah, that might make my head swim,” he said, giving her a little wink. “Worse, I mean, than your pretty blue eyes.”

  “Oh, go on with you!” She smacked his shoulder with her folded cloth. “Anything else, then?”

  “Not at present,” he said. “But perhaps I’ll think of something, if it means you’ll come back?”

  She laughed. And they both knew he wasn’t going to think of something. Not that sort of something.

  Still, it was a small enough thing to do, to cheer up a plain girl a bit with a little light flirtation. Besides, she had a lovely, if slightly too plump, figure, and eyes that radiated honesty. Indeed, he sensed not a whit of malice in her. And plain, perhaps, was not the word. The truth was, most women of good heart were pretty in one way or another if a man just took the time to look. So he looked. And he flirted. For no reason. For any reason.

  And thinking of all that, for reasons he could not explain, made him long for the one woman he didn’t flirt with.