Mita smoothed the corset reverently, then pushed it toward Barrett. “It is yours, memsab. You will be wishing to put it on.”
Still Barrett hesitated, feeling a curious reluctance to take or even touch the garment. It had been cleaned and pressed, she saw, Mita’s doing of course. But Barrett somehow knew that if she took the garment back she would be accepting everything that went with it—England and all its stuffy rules and rigid propriety. All the ease and freedom she had discovered here would be denied her.
“Memsab?” Mita asked curiously.
Barrett did not answer, eyes fixed on the corset. Why did she have such a feeling of distaste about it? Could it be part of the chill memories sealed somewhere in her mind?
“You will be late, miss.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Barrett took a deep breath and reached for the corset.
At the first contact an odd chill shot through her fingers and she shivered. Whatever was the matter with her?
Muttering, she grasped the heavy, boned garment and carried it to her chest. Something scratched her; one of the stays appeared to be bent.
“It was broken and I had to mend its—its stays, do you call them? I hope the work is acceptable to the memsab.”
“It will be fine, Mita.”
Suddenly Barrett had to fight down an urge to cry. After all she had been through, why did this one piece of clothing upset her so? Could it be because it represented everything that Pagan hated, all the things that stood between the two of them?
Squaring her shoulders, Barrett slipped from her nightdress and molded the corset around her, suppressing a shudder as the stays dug into her soft skin.
How strange, she thought, fingering the rigid metal bones. Yes, how utterly strange that we should consider this to be civilized.
Colonel Hadley was waiting in a chintz-filled drawing room in Windhaven’s grand stone west wing. Barrett was glad to have Mita to guide her, for she would never have found the room alone.
“Ah, Miss, er—Brown. You’re looking much more the thing, I’m glad to say.” Large fingers crushed her hands in a warm grip. “Quite lovely, in fact, if you’ll excuse an old man for his enthusiasm.”
“You—you are too kind,” Barrett said quietly, much moved by his bluff sympathy.
“Nonsense, m’dear. Now sit—sit, please. Standing is all well and good when you’re young, but at my age the joints are not so compliant as they once were. Of course mine have been knocked around more than most.”
Only then did Barrett notice the stiffness in his left leg. With a faint frown, he eased his long, lean body into an armchair across from the window then carefully extended his leg before him.
Barrett wanted to ask more, but she did not, realizing he would tell her if he choose to. Instead she looked curiously around her at the colorful room.
Blue and white porcelain bowls lined a solid wall of teak, each bowl filled with cut blossoms, jasmine and scarlet orchids next to lush centifolia roses, filling the room with heady perfume.
“How lovely!”
“The Tiger’s porcelains, but the flowers are my handiwork,” the colonel said with a touch of pride. “One of the few vices left to an old man, I’m afraid.”
“But they are wonderful! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such color or variety before. You must be a magician.”
Hadley smiled diffidently at her rush of praise. “Work, not magic, is all that’s required, m’dear. Soil’s rich as Devon loam here. The problem’s keeping the legions of bloody insects at bay. Oh, I say, I do beg your pardon,” he said quickly. “Not used to, er, female company here, you know.”
Barrett felt unaccountably pleased at his comment, though she refused to examine why.
“You’ll have a drink, won’t you? Sherry, perhaps?”
She nodded, accepting the tumbler he pressed into her hand.
From there the evening raced past in a rich, inexorable blur. Colonel Hadley led her into a candlelit dining room bright with faceted crystal and eggshell-thin porcelain. Heavy engraved silver flanked each setting, and Barrett noticed a third place was set at the head of the table.
Hadley caught her wary look. “The Tiger’s gone out to visit the upcountry fields. I don’t expect he’ll make it back before morning, but Mita always lays a place, just in case. So it will just be the two of us.” His eyes were keen. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“No. No—of course not,” Barrett said swiftly.
The food began to stream in, carried on silver platters by shyly smiling Sinhalese women in floor-length sarongs with orchids tucked behind their eyes.
“You must try these, m’dear. We call them sambol or rice pullers. But go slowly at first, as they’re laced with red pepper along with lime and grated coconut. Then try some of the papadams—er, fried wafers, you know. And of course you must have some coconut milk curry.” He passed Barrett dishes as fast as he spoke. “Here’s some fine chutney. Ah, mangoes and jak fruit. And you mustn’t skip the thalaguli.” At Barrett’s raised eyebrow, he passed her a plate of sesame balls. “Another of Mita’s specialties, you know.”
Barrett dutifully took some of each until her plate was piled high. At the sight of the gay, spicy foods, her stomach gave a growl of enthusiasm.
Hadley smiled. “Wretched of me to keep you waiting with an old man’s chatter. Go on, tuck in now. I envy you your first experience of such divine food. Mita is truly a wonderful cook.”
And the colonel was right, Barrett soon discovered. Subtle and exotic, the dishes were seasoned with coconut, coriander, cumin, and cinnamon, along with other spices she could not name.
She tried each one, trying to concentrate on enjoying the luxurious surroundings. But every time she looked up, her eyes wandered to the empty place setting at the head of the table and her appetite fled.
Thirty minutes later, after a flow of conversation carried on largely by the bemused colonel, she sat back with a rueful smile. “I don’t believe I’ve ever had such food in my life.” A shadow swept Barrett’s face, as she realized she could not be certain, since she still had no solid knowledge of the life she had led before coming to the island.
Her brow furrowed. Very carefully she laid down her fork, watching—but not quite seeing—the way it caught the reflection of a pair of overhanging palm-oil lanterns. “I—I expect you must be wondering why I’m here, even though you’re far too kind to ask.”
At the colonel’s growl of protest, she shook her head, clenching her hands in her lap. “I—I only wish I could tell you. But I can’t, you see. There was an accident, or perhaps it was not an accident, and—” She looked up, giving her companion a crooked little smile. “Now I don’t recall anything. Just fragments, always fragments. Although I don’t think the Tiger, as you call him, is inclined to believe me.”
The colonel leaned across the table and patted her shoulder with bluff sympathy. “Aye, the Tiger told me. Bloody foul business, if you’ll excuse the language. And as for Dev, I’m sure he does believe you.” He frowned. “It’s this ruby, you know. Seems to drive men mad. Women, too, come to think of it. And until it’s found…” His voice trailed away as he stared, abstracted, into the dancing light.
At that moment a large creamy moth fluttered overhead, its wings casting a monstrous shadow against the far wall. In fluttering sweeps it circled, ever closer to the flame, until finally it plunged inside and was incinerated with a faint hiss and a flash of light.
Barrett shivered, tugging at her corset, which suddenly seemed painfully tight. But somehow she could not escape the image of those frail wings exploding into flame and vanishing in a mere instant.
Would her own fate be just as swift and brutal? she wondered.
Outside in the corridor came the muffled drum of booted feet, and then Mita’s voice raised in soft enquiry. A low answer came in Tamil.
Barrett’s stomach twisted, goose bumps breaking out over the low décolletage of the teal blue gown Mita had insisted she wear.
; Her fingers twisted nervously as the boots hammered closer. Heat flooded her face.
The steps slowed, then halted outside the closed door of the dining room.
Barrett felt her heart race, her pulse drumming like thunder through her veins. She prayed he would go on, prayed she would not have to face him—not yet, while she was so strangely vulnerable, so unable to sort out the chaos of her emotions.
And then from the far corridor came Nihal’s quiet call.
With a pang of something perilously close to regret, Brett heard Pagan resume his brisk progress past the door and disappear down the hallway.
Her breath hissed out in a rush. Only then did she realize that she had been holding the air deep in her throat.
“Like that is it, m’dear?” The colonel’s eyes were dark and keen, but not unkind. “Seen it too often before not to recognize the signs, you understand? Aye, females have been falling all over Pagan since he was fifteen years old. Even then he had a wildness about him, a sort of gypsy recklessness that seemed to send them crashing like moths to a flame.”
Barrett shivered. The image of the incinerated moth returned to haunt her. She tried to speak but no sound emerged. Her hands twisted restlessly in her lap.
“No need to deny it. No need to say anything, in fact. I understand perfectly.”
No need to deny it.
She stiffened, hearing a faint drumming in her head.
No need to deny it, need to deny it. Like a cruel chant the words went on and on.
Her trembling hands cupped her temples. A shadow, smiling and faceless, loomed in the darkness at the edges of the room. She could hear him, feel him. But when she turned, he melted away, remaining always just beyond the edge of her vision.
She realized then that her memory was there and had always been there. All she had to do was reach out to seize it. All she had to do was want it, just as Pagan had told her in the glen.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to summon up all the past that had been denied her.
No need to deny it. No need…
Suddenly there was fear. Like a small, quick rodent with flashing white teeth it skittered close, snapping at any part of her it could reach.
I want to remember, she told herself fiercely. I must remember!
“Barrett—m’dear—” The colonel’s voice came faint, so faint, as if from a vast distance away.
She felt it. It was just beyond the fear now, waiting for her. Her chest rose and fell jerkily.
Take it, Brett. Want it and it’s yours.
“No need to deny it.” She repeated the words aloud, softly at first and then louder as the power in her grew. She felt the gathering, the first tingle of full awareness. But with the power the fear grew too, until she thought it would rip her into a thousand quivering pieces.
But she held, held until the snapping jaws melted back into the shadows, until she knew the past she searched for was right before her, and when her eyes opened she would see it.
“Are you quite all right, m’dear? Perhaps some brandy—” The words were closer now but strange, as if spoken in a foreign tongue.
Barrett paid no heed, intent only on the faceless things lurking in the darkness.
Yes, I want it. I must have it. For myself. For Pagan.
She opened her eyes then, staring at the colonel’s worried face. But her teal eyes looked far beyond him, fixed on a heaving, straining darkness that seemed to lurch closer with every jerky surge of her heart.
Like splintered glass, the bright shards flashed out, in every shape and size. And each one was a memory, some sweet, some bitter, some inexpressibly cruel.
Suddenly it was all there, every ragged moment, every splintered fragment of her past spilled in a glistening heap about her.
Their light was so bright they blinded her, made her throat constrict, made her want to weep.
“My dear girl—Miss Brown—” Strong, bony fingers circled her hand with surprising force. “You must tell me what bothers you.”
Barrett did not think to lie, not to the kindly face before her. “You may call me Brett, Colonel,” she said, her voice high and unsteady. “Just Brett. All my friends do. And as for the rest, I’ve … I’ve never liked brown.” Her eyes were huge, tremulous. “If you want something more formal, you may call me Winslow. For you see, I—I know. Dear heaven, I remember. All of it now.”
The colonel shot her a curious look, his unruly brows knitting. But before he could speak there came a new voice from the doorway, low and dark and commanding. In their turmoil neither Barrett nor Hadley had heard the door open.
“Yes, my dear, pray do enlighten us, why don’t you? Just what is going on here?”
He was dressed in formal attire, white broadcloth crisp beneath black worsted. His hair was gleaming, still damp from his bath. Dimly Barrett realized he was the most strikingly handsome man she had ever seen.
He was also the most furious.
His jaw locked as he stared at Hadley’s hands circling her slim wrists. His mouth twisted in a mocking smile as he strode across the room, stopping to fill a glass at the huge black lacquer sideboard. Only then, whiskey in hand, did he saunter to the table and slide his long frame into his chair. “Yes, do tell us, Miss—Winslow, did you say? I’m all agog to hear. And if this story is anything as good as her last one, you’re in for a rare treat, Adrian, I assure you.”
Two bright spots of color flared at Barrett’s cheeks, the only color in her ashen face. But pride was a habit with her. Only an instinct before, now it was much, much more.
Now it was a certainty, rooted in a stream of clear images that went back a decade, to the time she had knocked down the arrogant Jamie Warrenton for calling her grandfather a “lack-witted old bumbler with more hair than sense.”
Barrett took a long breath, glorying in the warm rush of memories, in her past, bittersweet though it was.
Yes, it was before her now, the long years of feeling alone, never able to fit in with the other giddy, idle females of her acquaintance in Brighton.
And then her grandfather, coming to take her from the rigid propriety of the school in Kent where she’d been sent following her parents’ death.
All that, she remembered. And though it hurt, she clutched the memories close, studying each jagged edge and plunging it deep into her heart, wincing as each became part of her again, merged to her in joy and in sorrow.
Yes, she was proud. All the Winslows were.
And it was partly that pride that had gotten her into this bloody mess that she and her grandfather found themselves in now.
Once again the danger, making her shiver.
But as long as she was here, he would be safe. That much Barrett knew with certainty. And until she sorted through the whole of it, sifted through all the tangled threads and understood the how and why of it, this past was best kept her secret.
She gripped her hands tightly in her lap. Yes, until then, she must say nothing. Had it just been the colonel before her, studying her with such kindly intensity, she might have spoken. But never to the mocking figure who stared at her over the rim of his half-empty crystal tumbler.
To him she owed no explanations.
“We are waiting, Miss Brown. Er, Winslow.” Pagan’s tone was frankly mocking.
Barrett’s chin rose. “Would you be so kind as to pour me a glass of sherry, Colonel?”
“Of course, m’dear.” He shoved to his feet rather awkwardly, but was quite deft with his hands. In seconds he returned, pressing a tumbler full of amber spirits into her chill fingers.
He frowned. “Good Lord, you’re fairly freezing! Aye, the sherry’ll be just the thing. Drink it up now.”
She did. The drink was sharp and mellow at the same time, sliding down like satin fire.
She cleared her throat, studying the amber spirits. Her voice, when she finally spoke, was low and tense. “There were days in that stench-filled room that I wished I were dead, do you know? For all that it’s a mortal sin, the
re were times it seemed to me a greater sin to live. Always the darkness. Always the pitch and roll of the sea. And always the eyes, pressed to the hole in the door.” Her voice hardened. “I tried to strike him once. I worked a stay from my corset and hid beside the door. I heard the footsteps stop, then the little door open where they pushed in the food, if rancid soup and maggoty biscuits can be called food. And this time when the eye peered in, I rammed the steel stay through the hole.”
Barrett looked away through the window into the darkness of the night. “He screamed most awfully. He said terrible things, and I suppose I deserved them. They beat me after that. It was—very unpleasant.” Her voice was flat, mechanical. “Of course they were very clever about it. They always struck covered skin and were careful to leave no scars. The bruises never lasted above a week. My appearance was a great concern with them, you see. Up until the end, that is. Then it suited them to mark me, so your suspicion would be lessened.”
Dimly she heard a raw curse from the far side of the table, but she did not look away from the night, locked deep in the memories now.
“There was no confronting them, of course, no hope of escape, at sea as we were. Each day, each second became an agony. Once I actually stopped eating, for by then I knew the soup they fed me carried some sort of sleeping draught.” Her eyes plumbed the night sky blindly. “They told me in precise detail after that what would happen if I tried that ever again or disobeyed in any way.” Her face settled into a pale mask, carved alabaster against the haunted teal pools of her eyes.
Her fingers traced the tumbler’s long gleaming grooves. “But I was still afire with righteous indignation then. I actually tried to escape the next day, feigning illness and then shoving past when the door opened.” Her fingers stopped their slow, hypnotic tracing for a moment. “And then … well, let’s just say that they were true to their word. After that … I made no more attempts at escape.”
Pagan’s face locked in rigid lines. His fingers clenched on the arm of his chair. He wanted to scream for her to stop, wanted to bolt from the room.
He wanted to crush her to him and soothe her until every foul memory was swept from her mind forever.
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