Talk of the Ton

by Eloisa James

  “I hope so,” India said, “for I’ve caused him a great deal of bother and cost him an enormous amount of money.”

  “The fact that he was willing to pay it should tell you something.”

  “I don’t know him very well,” she admitted. “But I know that he always does his duty. Whether he ransomed me because he loves me or because he was duty bound to do so remains to be seen.” She turned to Lord Barclay. “You were right, you know.”

  “Oh?” He raised an eyebrow in query.

  “I’m not really English through and through. I was born in Calcutta.”

  “I know,” he said.

  She frowned. “You could tell that from my voice?”

  He smiled at her and shook his head. “No, I read it in the newspapers after the Portsmouth . . .”

  “Newspapers,” Lady India mused sadly. “Imagine that. I forgot about newspapers or that there are places in the world where people are allowed to read them.” She was quiet for a moment, then pinned him with her gaze. “Did you also know that I came to London from my home in Calcutta because my parents and grandparents wanted me to be presented at court like every proper English lady?”

  “No,” he answered. “I didn’t know that.”

  “I left India in the summer, but it was cold when I arrived in London to live with my grandparents. Cold and dark and damp.” She stopped to trace her finger along the back of one of the kitchen chairs and looked at Jonathan. “And I hated it. I longed for Mama and Papa and home. I longed for home so badly that I made myself physically ill. My grandmother took pity on me and asked my grandfather to arrange passage for me back home. My governess, Miss Lockwood, elected to accompany me.” India paused. “She could have remained in London. Grandfather would have hired someone to accompany me back home, but Miss Lockwood had no family, and she said that all my wonderful tales of India had filled her with a burning desire to see it.” She took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and toyed with a lock of her long, dark hair, winding and unwinding it around her finger. “Grandmother and Grandfather had engaged her services shortly before I arrived. I knew her less than half a year, but we became very close. So close that she wouldn’t hear of sending me home alone. Besides, she said, she wanted to see the elephants parading through the streets on festival days all decked out in their bells and finery, and she wanted to see the huge temples, the fakirs, and all the tropical flowers. It was all arranged. Miss Lockwood would accompany me on my visit to see my parents in India, and then we’d return to London in a year to continue my English education and my preparation for presentation at court. My grandmother assured me that she loved me enough to grant me another year to become accustomed to the idea of life in England, and she was sure that Miss Lockwood would ease the pang of homesickness when we returned. Miss Lockwood promised my grandmother that she would prepare me so well that my London season would be a resounding success, and every gentleman with whom I danced would want to marry me. It was such a lovely dream.” She bit her bottom lip and blinked back tears. “Miss Lockwood made a London season sound so wonderful. It was, she said, the most exciting time in her life, even if she had only had the one season. Even if she had failed to garner any proposals. She had still gotten to dance and had been partnered by the scions of some of England’s greatest families. She loved to dance, and she had saved every dance card. She showed them to me and shared the family history of nearly every gentleman with whom she’d danced. And she taught me all the dances. We practiced for hours and hours every Friday, so that when I made my curtsy, everyone would name me the most elegant dancer in London. That was Miss Lockwood’s dream for me. She wanted me to be the most elegant dancer in London so I might marry a handsome and wealthy young gentleman and have lots of children she could teach—” India took a deep breath and glanced down at her feet. “But now, I shan’t make my curtsy or be presented at court or dance in the moonlight when I return to London. I won’t be able to keep my promise to Miss Lockwood.”

  “Why not?” Jonathan asked the question without thinking and could have bitten out his tongue when she answered.

  “You know as well as I do, Lord Barclay, that disgraced ladies cannot be presented at court. And I have definitely been disgraced. My reputation and my good name have been ruined.”

  “Through no fault of your own,” Jonathan pointed out.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “It makes no difference. The fact is that my chances of making a good match are gone—especially since my grandfather was forced to pay a fortune to ransom me. With my dowry in jeopardy, what gentleman would choose to take me to wife?” She looked Jonathan in the eye. “I lost my reputation when a Turkish sultan purchased me from a band of murderous pirates, took my virtue, and confined me to his harem. But there are no exceptions. It doesn’t matter why I lost my virtue or how I lost it. The only thing that matters to the court and to proper English society is that I’m no longer a fresh, young maiden, and everyone in London knows it.” She lifted her chin a notch higher. “No doubt they read all about it in the newspapers.”

  “Not everyone,” Jonathan said, attempting to lighten her mood. “There must be quite a few eligible gentlemen ignorant of your past. Because there are lots of gentlemen in London who’ve never read a newspaper or anything else.”

  India giggled in spite of herself.

  “Now there’s a nice sound,” he told her. “You must do it more often.”

  India blinked in surprise. “I’d almost forgotten how to laugh,” she admitted. “It’s been so long since I’ve had anything to laugh about or anyone to laugh with.”

  “That will change,” he promised. “You’ll see.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Believe it or not, there are gentlemen out there who value all the wonderful qualities you possess.”

  “What qualities?”

  “Strength and pride and honesty and courage and beauty. And any gentleman who desires those qualities more than he desires cash would be proud to marry you,” Jonathan said softly.

  I would be proud to marry you. The thought came unbidden, and Jonathan could almost feel his bachelor status slipping through his fingers. He nervously cleared his throat and awaited the outcome of his impulsive declaration.

  Lord Barclay’s thoughtful answer touched India almost as much as it surprised her. He sounded almost as if he believed it. “Then I shall have to hope there is such a gentleman at the Admiralty Ball,” she said. “And that he asks me to dance. In the meantime . . .” She hesitated, moistening her suddenly dry lips once again. “My invitation still stands.”

  “Invitation?” he croaked.

  “The cottage has two bedchambers,” she reminded him. “And you’re welcome to one of them.”

  “No,” Jonathan repeated firmly, keenly aware that his willpower was in danger of crumbling. “Thank you for the invitation, but no.” He collected his coat and reached for the doorknob.

  “Wait!”

  Jonathan gave her a wary look.

  “Please,” she said. “Wait.” She turned and walked out of the kitchen, disappearing through the doorway that led to the other rooms in the cottage.

  She returned to the kitchen with a pillow and an arm-load of bedding in one arm and dragging a large, thick, red silk mattress behind her. “If you won’t accept the offer of a bedchamber inside the cottage, then at least take this.” She handed Jonathan the pillow and clean sheets, then maneuvered the mattress between them and offered him the thick loop she’d used to tug it out of the main bedchamber.

  “What’s this?”

  “Mustafa’s pallet.” Lady India looked up at him. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t sleep in comfort, even if you are determined to sleep in the stable. After all,” she said softly, “he won’t be using it.”

  “No,” Jonathan agreed, “I don’t suppose he will.” He touched her fingers as he took hold of the loop she offered. “Good night, Lady India.”

  “Good night, Lord Barclay.”

&nbs
p; “Pleasant dreams.”

  India shivered as if someone had walked over her grave. Five years in the seraglio had put an end to pleasant dreams. In the seraglio, troublesome concubines were strangled while they slept or were smothered, or poisoned, or had their throats cut . . . Sleep didn’t bring pleasant dreams. It brought death. India had learned to fear sleep and she’d all but forgotten that there were people in the world who still had pleasant dreams. And someone to beckon them the way Lord Barclay had wished pleasant dreams upon her. “And to you,” she called, as he closed the back door and headed for the barn.

  “The infidel will die on the morrow.”

  India opened her eyes and sat up, pulling her knees to her chest, and wrapping her arms around them as she huddled against the headboard of the bed. From the other room she could hear Mustafa muttering a litany of malevolent threats and promises in the mixture of Turkish and French she had come to understand and fear.

  “I know you do not sleep, English. I know you listen. I know you hear my voice.”

  India pressed her face against her knees, bit her bottom lip to keep from answering, and silently conjugated Latin verbs in a desperate attempt to block out the sound of Mustafa’s voice.

  “He will have to loose my bonds eventually,” Mustafa continued. “And that will be his undoing.”

  The eunuch made a sound that might have been a groan, but could have just as easily been a chuckle. “His death will be slow and painful,” he promised. “And you shall watch as he bleeds from a thousand cuts. You shall watch as the floor grows red and slick from his blood. You shall watch as I cut out his tongue and replace it with his rod and testicles.”

  “Be quiet!” India ordered.

  Mustafa giggled. “And when I’ve taken his manhood from him, I shall cut his heart from his chest and let you watch as it beats in the palm of my hand . . .”

  “Shut up!” India ordered again, louder this time, her voice vibrating with rage.

  “You shall watch as I crush the infidel’s heart in my fist and squeeze the life from it.” He paused. “And after I kill the infidel, I shall take my red, silk cord, and wind it about your slim, white neck, and pull and pull until your face turns purple and your eyes and tongue protrude. I shall tighten my cord, until the bones in your neck snap and I force the life’s breath from your body. And then I shall laugh . . .”

  “Don’t!” she warned. “Don’t say another word!”

  But Mustafa ignored her. “The way I laughed when I squeezed the life from your friend. And I shall take my blade and cut off your head, and keep it on a table beside my bed next to hers . . .”

  India let go of her knees, reached beneath her pillow, and grabbed the knife Mustafa had held pressed to Lord Barclay’s neck and had dropped when Lord Barclay had outsmarted and overpowered him. Launching herself from the bed, she hurried out of her bedchamber to the kitchen and beyond.

  Mustafa’s eyes grew as big and round as saucers when he looked up and saw India coming toward him, his curved blade in her hand.

  “I warned you, you pile of dung! I warned you to hold your tongue! I warned you to be quiet! I warned you not to speak of what you did! But you wouldn’t listen. So, I’m going to make certain you never speak of it again.”

  Mustafa opened his mouth and screamed loud enough to wake the dead.

  Chapter Seven

  The red silk pallet retained the scent of the oil Mustafa wore, but Jonathan ignored it. He’d slept with far worse smells assaulting his nostrils, and although the fragrance was heavier than he would have chosen for himself, it wasn’t altogether unpleasant, and the silk pallet was a vast improvement on the mound of straw he’d fashioned in the stall adjoining Fellow’s.

  Jonathan maneuvered the silk mattress through the door of the stall and arranged it atop the pile of clean straw. He tossed the pillow onto the mattress, spread the sheet and blanket over it, then stripped off his waistcoat, shirt, and boots, unbuttoned the top three buttons on his buff trousers, and sank down onto the pallet and rolled beneath the sheet.

  Jonathan exhaled a deep, satisfied breath. The mattress was big and thick and long enough to cradle his body in comfort, and Jonathan graciously succumbed to the luxury of a silk mattress and silk sheets. Closing his eyes, he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  He awoke several hours later to the sound of a shrill, high-pitched scream of terror.

  “Bloody hell!” Jonathan bolted upright, tugged on his boots, and sprinted through the misting rain toward the cottage. He opened the back door and discovered Lady India Burton perched on the center of the eunuch’s massive chest and holding the eunuch’s curved blade against his throat with enough force to draw blood.

  Mustafa’s black eyes were wide with terror as he stared up at Lady India, and he whimpered as he tried to wiggle away from the knife and failed.

  Tears streamed down Lady India’s face, but she was unaware of them as she threatened the man beneath her in her mix of French and Turkish. Jonathan understood enough of her words to know that she wanted the eunuch dead and was frustrated by the fact that while she’d drawn his blood, Lady India could not bring herself to finish him off. Jonathan watched as she tried, once again, to slit Mustafa’s throat and inflicted another in a series of thin, bleeding wounds.

  Jonathan crossed the floor, hooked an arm around Lady India’s waist, and lifted her off the eunuch’s chest. “Torturing is allowed,” he told her, “for I’ve no doubt that he deserves it, but I can’t allow you to kill him.” Jonathan set her on her feet and held her close to his chest as he pried the knife from her hand and tossed it aside.

  “Please . . .” She clung to him and wept huge, hot, heavy tears into the mat of hair on Jonathan’s chest. “Help me . . .”

  “I am helping you, sweeting,” Jonathan said.

  She looked up at him. “Please, help me kill him.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “But I want him to die.”

  “I know you do,” he soothed. “I know he can’t die soon enough to make up for the five years of fear and suffering you’ve endured at his hands, but I cannot let you kill him. Not like this. Not when he’s tied and as helpless as a stranded whale.”

  “Why not?” she demanded, years of anger and frustration evident in her voice.

  “Because it would be murder,” Jonathan said simply. “And you, Lady India, are not a murderer.”

  She fixed her gaze on Jonathan’s face, silently pleading with him to understand.

  But Jonathan stood firm. “And neither am I.”

  “But he . . .” India bowed her head as the tears continued to flow. She knew Lord Barclay was right. But she also knew that Mustafa deserved to suffer the way all those women in the harem had suffered.

  Jonathan nodded in understanding. “I know he’s a man who deserves to die for the crimes he’s committed against the women under his control. I know you want to see him dead. I know you want to go to sleep at night without seeing his face or wondering if you’ll be next, but my dear Lady India, none of your reasons for wanting him dead—as valid as they are—change the fact that killing him like this would be murder. And I’m not going to allow either one of us to use your need for revenge to compel us to become as cold-blooded as he is.” He took hold of India’s shoulders and forced her to face him. “You can hit him, kick him, bite him, spit on him, and carve your initials on his forehead for all I care. You can vent your spleen in any way you choose, short of murder. I can’t let you become the thing you despise, eternally haunted by the blood upon your hands.”

  India buried her face against Jonathan’s chest and sobbed.

  Jonathan bent at the knees, scooped her up into his arms, and carried her out of the cottage to the stable. He entered the stall next to his horse’s stall and carefully lowered himself and Lady India down onto the red silk pallet. He held her in his arms, cradled against his chest, and rocked her like a baby while she sobbed, and when she’d cried the five years of tears she’d
been holding back, Jonathan encouraged her to talk. “What happened?”

  “I incurred Mustafa’s wrath the very first day in the women’s quarters,” she related. “And he’s never forgotten it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I bit him on the hand when he ripped open my clothing and began his inspection of my . . .” She faltered. “My person. I had already been thoroughly inspected by the pirates who took us from the Portsmouth. We all were.”

  “How many of you were abducted?” According to the newspaper accounts Jonathan had read, eight passengers, including Lady India Burton and her governess, had been taken off the Portsmouth alive. The whereabouts of the other passengers were unknown.

  “Eight of us,” India replied. “Miss Annabelle Southwick, her brothers, Gordon and Craig, Miss Helen Winston and her companion, Miss Nancy Phillips, Patrick Joiner, Miss Dorinda Lockwood, and me.”

  “The newspaper accounts named seven passengers,” Jonathan said.

  “Patrick wasn’t a passenger,” India told him. “He was cabin boy on the Portsmouth.” She closed her eyes and remembered the handsome cabin boy with white-blond hair and blue eyes and a youthful body bronzed by the sun. At four and ten, Patrick was two years India’s junior and had been a cabin boy since the age of nine. “He was the only crew member taken alive. The other crew members were already dead or put to the sword.” She shuddered at the memory.

  “What happened to Patrick?”

  “We were all sold to the dey of Algiers,” India explained. “He decided our fate. He sent me and Miss Lockwood and the Southwick boys to Sultan Hamid as a gift. He kept Patrick for himself and sold Miss Southwick, Miss Winston, and Miss Phillips at auction.” She exhaled sharply. “I never saw Patrick or the other ladies again.”

  “What about the Southwick brothers?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Once we entered the women’s quarters in the Topkapi, the only males we saw were eunuchs and the sultan. But I heard whispers that the older one didn’t survive his punishment for trying to escape, and that the younger one was presented to one of the sultan’s ministers as a gift.”