by Eloisa James
“Possibly,” Breksby said promptly. “Very strange household, Jerningham’s. You know he went over to India to be a missionary?”
“I heard that he originally traveled to India with that idea, but he discarded it,” Quill replied.
“That’s right. He set himself up as a huge nabob over there, deep in the Marathas country—because that’s where he fancied himself saving souls. Except that rather than save souls, he has made a fortune exporting goods to China. Some say he was part of the early opium trade to that country. I don’t credit it, myself.”
“Why is he now involved in Holkar politics?”
“Tukoji Rao’s heir is Jerningham’s nephew, on his first wife’s side. The boy was actually raised in Jerningham’s household, side by side with his daughter.”
“The relationship doesn’t explain why Jerningham would secrete the boy away when it looked as if he might become an heir to the throne.”
“Word has it that Jerningham is so bitter against the East India Company that he’d do anything to cast a spoke in their wheel.” Breksby took a quick look at the gold watch suspended from his waistcoat. “I shall look forward to discussing the situation at length with your father. And as I said, I do also wish to congratulate him on your brother’s upcoming nuptials.”
Quill stared at the closed door to the study for some time after Breksby’s departure. Suddenly he gave a short laugh. Quill may not have known Gabby very long, but he was quite sure that she would loyally support her father—and that she could fib her way out of a tight spot without turning a hair. Perhaps Breksby, that wily old fox, was about to meet his match.
THE NEXT MORNING Gabby stirred and stretched luxuriously. For the first time in months she didn’t wake in a cramped bunk. There was no pitch and swell of waves under her. She had left the curtains open the previous night, and pale sunlight was spilling through the windows. Outside she could hear larks singing. At least, she assumed they were larks. Her father’s poetry books had talked of larks singing in English gardens.
Having gone to bed rather worried about her future marriage, she felt renewed hope in the morning light. True, dinner had been a starched and stiff affair, during which Peter instructed her at length about members of the royal family. And he was absolutely right to point out that her education had been sadly neglected in this respect. Clearly, Prinny—as Peter called the Prince of Wales—was important to her future husband, and so she fully planned to cultivate an interest in royal doings. If she found the exploits of this Prinny a trifle…well, a trifle wearisome, that was beside the point.
The important thing was that Peter was so lovely. Gabby had watched him surreptitiously as he explicated the royal family’s connections to German aristocracy, and she found him fascinating. His skin was as white as ivory. She had never seen another man like him. Even the Englishmen who frequented her father’s palace were invariably tanned dark by the Indian sun. Peter’s hair was a soft nut-brown, and it fell in perfectly ordered curls over his brow.
Gabby hopped out of bed and went over to the window. It was the beginning of November, and the garden should, by all accounts, be withered and brown. She had heard of English winters, how the wind whistled down the steely plains, and how icy rain sliced across one’s face for months at a time. How people fell asleep in heaps of snow and never woke again, and how ice balls as big as mango fruit crushed the roofs of houses, without a moment’s warning. Indian servants were full of tales of the English winter, stories that accounted for the bloodthirsty, formal, and rapacious nature of Englishmen. It was the cold, they told her.
But here—the garden was lovely, thick with great golden- and ruby-colored leaves and ginger-cheeked apple trees. It didn’t look cold outside. Gabby pushed the heavy weight of her hair back over her shoulders and leaned close to the window. Dawn had only just come, and the house was absolutely still. It couldn’t be much later than five in the morning. She listened for a moment. There was no sound at all, no distant tinkle of voices, no rumble of footsteps.
She could run outside for a moment or two and no one would be the wiser.
Quickly Gabby pulled on her night-robe and tied her hair back with a ribbon. She hesitated for a moment and then splashed water on her face and brushed her teeth. The garden was calling to her, but she abhorred the feeling of a sleepy mouth.
Finally she pulled on her half boots, which looked even more shabby and stained as they peeped out from her white nightdress. Then she tiptoed out of the room, down the wide stairs—and hesitated. How was she to find the garden? If she went out the front door, she would be on the street, and there was undoubtedly no access to the garden from the street.
At the bottom of the hallway was a braise door—the door where Codswallop had disappeared with their outer garments the night before. So that was likely to lead to the servants’ quarters. And she knew that the drawing room filled with tiger tables didn’t lead to the garden. Gabby silently turned the knob to the last door. A moment later, she pushed one of the tall garden doors ajar and slipped through, shivering a bit at the rush of cool air that greeted her.
The sky was a pale, pale blue, as unlike the hotly oiled blue of an Indian sky as possible. And the air smelled different. It was rich and watery, as if it breathed rain. Gabby drifted into the garden like a ghost, glancing down at her small boots, watching the toes become spotted and then drenched dark with dew.
Before her the garden curled off in three directions. She wandered down a path that was lined in flowers gamely hanging on to their last petals—brilliant cherry-red roses and seashell-pink, delicate ones that grew in clusters. The air smelled different here too, spicy, like the applesauce she had tried for the first time the night before. Gabby reached out to pluck a blossom, but they were so beautiful and, admittedly, so wet that she drew back her hand.
In the distance Gabby could just hear the sounds of London waking up. The rumbling of carts drifted over the high stone walls, mingled with the sleepy waking calls of birds. She walked farther, remembering the full-throated brilliance of the orchids that grew around her father’s house and the shrieking birds that hid among those blossoms. Here the hedges hid twitters and small songs, introductory trills that sounded like songbooks for baby birds.
Her boots made whispering noises against the stone walk. She turned another slow curve—and stopped.
Her future brother-in-law was seated on a stone bench. His legs were stretched out full length before him, and his head was leaning back, eyes closed. Perhaps Quill was asleep? Gabby hesitated to wake him. He must spend a good deal of time in the garden, she thought. The sun had gilded his face a deep honey brown. One thing that she had noticed immediately was how white everyone in England was. Their faces shone like chalk or like pearl—well, like her face. Her father had never allowed her to be outdoors without a bonnet. He said he’d never be able to sell her on the marriage mart if the sun colored her skin.
Her future husband—Peter—had skin that was even whiter than hers. Peter was perfection, Gabby thought with a rather delicious shiver, from the top of his precisely cut brown locks to his white skin.
Quill was a darker hue altogether. Even in the dawn light his hair took on wine-colored glints, a mahogany that glowed in the rosy light and matched the toasty warm color of his skin. He needed a haircut, Gabby thought. She smiled. Quill needed someone to take care of him. She would make sure that he found a wife, just as soon as she made some London acquaintances.
Silently, Gabby tiptoed forward and seated herself trimly next to Quill on the bench.
To Gabby’s dismay, he woke with a choked gasp. “I’m so sorry,” Gabby said. “I thought you were daydreaming.”
Quill looked at her without a word. His eyes were heavy-lidded, so dark that she couldn’t see any color.
“I didn’t expect to find anyone in the garden,” Gabby explained cheerfully. She was used to people who woke in an irritable state. “And I certainly wouldn’t have woken you if I’d known you were asleep. You haven’t been out
here all night, have you?”
Quill just stared at her as if she were a ghost. Gabby felt a prickle of annoyance. She had already ascertained that he felt that talking was an occupation below him.
Then she grinned at him. She really liked her big, silent brother-in-law. “You might say, ‘Good morning, Gabby. How did you sleep on your first night in England?’
“I may not know much about English manners,” Gabby added, “but I am quite certain that greeting your future family members is customary.”
His response was rather less friendly. “What the devil!”
Gabby’s smile dimmed a bit. “I trust this is not your garden? No one told me that I should not come into the garden. And I do apologize for interrupting your sleep, but I was so pleased to see someone here, because I would dearly love to ask—”
Quill interrupted her. “Gabby.”
“Yes?”
“Gabby, you are not dressed.”
That seemed self-evident to Gabby. “Well, I am dressed,” she explained. “I am wearing my night-robe, and my boots, as you can see.” She stuck out her small boot from below the hem of her robe, and they both stared at it for a moment.
“You needn’t worry about proprieties,” Gabby said brightly. “After all, it’s just us out here. The servants aren’t even awake yet. And we won’t tell anyone.” By which she meant, we won’t tell Peter. It was clear to her, after less than twenty-four hours in Peter’s presence, that he had a fearful sense of propriety.
She twinkled at Quill, who was still affecting his air of silence and looking at her in that disapproving way. But whereas the idea of Peter’s disapproval made her feel rather breathless and anxious, the idea of infuriating Quill quite pleased her. It must be the difference between being with a lover and a brother, Gabby thought with a delightful sense of discovery.
She scooted over on the bench and tucked her arm under Quill’s. “Now, sir, unless you are quite wedded to being mute, would you tell me the names of these plants?”
Quill looked at her as mutely as any rock. He still couldn’t take it in. He’d been unable to sleep because of pain in his leg and had come outside, to find mouse-gray trees brooding over the grass in an early-morning fog. He’d walked out the kink in his leg and finally sat down—and had the oddest dream.
A dream, God forbid, about Gabby. He refused to even think about the images his treacherous mind had woven. And when he awoke, there she was. Looking like the aftermath of his dream, with her hair falling freely back over her shoulders, escaping from a loosely tied ribbon even as he watched.
“Gabby,” he said in a rough voice, trying vainly to get a grasp on his imagination. “You should not be out in the garden in your night clothing. You should never, ever be seen outside your room in a state of undress.”
Gabby ignored him and jumped to her feet, tugging him up as well. “I think we are safe for another five minutes, Quill. Just five minutes—and then I’ll run back in the house.”
Quill was no match for Gabby when she wanted something, and he knew it. Especially not when her lips were flushed red, swollen from sleep, and her eyes looked at him so…so invitingly. Her skin glowed with rosy lights that made his blood throb and his fingers twitch to touch her, to push aside the thick night-robe, to—oh, God, to fall on his knees before her and bury his face in her creamy skin—
Quill started down the garden path with a choked curse, dragging Gabby behind him. “That’s a pudding-pipe tree,” he said, nodding to a small tree. “Those are pears growing by the summer house. And these are apple trees.”
“Oh, wait, Quill, wait,” Gabby cried. “I want to look at the pudding-pipe tree. The one with flowers.”
Quill reached out and snapped off a spray of golden blossoms. He shook it briskly, and a tiny shower of gleaming dewdrops flew from the plant. “Normally, it would be finished blooming, but it’s been a warm autumn.” He held it out to Gabby.
“It’s lovely.” Gabby’s face glowed with happiness as she buried her nose in the flowers. When she raised her face, the tip of her nose was incongruously dusted with buttercup yellow.
Quill reached out and brushed off her nose with his thumb. She had a small, straight, patrician nose that spoke of generations of Jerninghams, all breeding noble and true, at least in the nose category.
“How did your father meet your mother?” He didn’t know much about Richard Jerningham, although he was getting more and more curious.
“She was a French émigré,” Gabby explained, not seeming to find his abrupt question impolite. “My father married her within two weeks of meeting her. They were married less than a year, as she died giving birth to me.”
Quill was increasingly aware of the dappled sunlight that was now warming his back. Gabby seemed to have no idea what would happen if they were found together in the garden. He tugged her around and began to walk briskly back toward the house. Then he stopped. “You must enter alone,” he told her.
“Quill!” Gabby said, her husky voice annoyed. “We were speaking of something important. You are most impolite to ignore me. I said my mother died at my birth, and you should at least offer your sympathies.”
Quill looked down at her and once again stifled the impulse to kiss her into silence. “I would like to hear more about your father and mother,” he said, after a moment. “But I am worried that we will be discovered by the servants. They must be up and around the house by now.”
“Well,” Gabby said, “would that be such a tragedy? We are family, after all.” And she smiled up at him, her eyes as innocent and friendly as a babe’s.
“You are not married to Peter yet,” Quill pointed out. “If we were found in the garden together, people would undoubtedly think the worst. You would be ruined.”
“That reminds me,” Gabby said with a frown. “Why am I marrying Peter? Not,” she added quickly, “that I have any reluctance to do so.”
And Quill could tell by her sunny smile that she didn’t.
“But I am quite certain that my papa thinks I am marrying you,” Gabby said confusedly. “Or rather, he thinks that Peter is you. I am afraid that he believes that I will be a viscountess someday. But that won’t happen, will it, Quill? Your wife will be the viscountess.”
“You may never be a viscountess. But your son will surely be a viscount. I shall never marry.”
“But—”
He cut her off. “Gabby, you must return to your chambers now. Go!” And he pushed her toward the Yellow Drawing Room.
Gabby had no recourse but to do as he told her. So she trotted up the steps and slipped through the door to the house, thinking intently about what Quill had said. Of course he would marry! She didn’t care a bit about being a viscountess, and what her father didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. But Quill was lonely. She could see it in the bleak look in his eyes. He needed someone to coax him into speech and make him laugh—even if he did laugh only with his eyes.
Back in her room, Gabby took off her half boots and neatly stowed them under her bed, hiding the wet toes under her counterpane. Then she climbed back into bed and rang for a maid.
She forgot about the spray of blooms that she brought from the garden until a young girl named Margaret appeared. The first thing she said, after a proper curtsy, was “What lovely flowers, miss!”
“Yes, aren’t they beautiful?” Gabby said cheerfully. “Did you say your name was Margaret? That’s such an English name. We don’t have flowers like this in India. This came from a pudding-pipe tree, which sounds so English as well, doesn’t it?”
Enchanted by Gabby’s friendly eyes, Margaret bustled about straightening up the room and building up a fire. She didn’t even notice Gabby’s wet boots, although she tucked them under her arm to be cleaned and polished. And she didn’t think twice about the newly picked flowers now residing in a glass by the young mistress’s bed. She’d never met a gentry lady who was so friendly and all. Why, she treated her exactly as if she, Margaret, were a friend of hers.
By the time Gabby appeared in the breakfast room holding Phoebe by the hand, Margaret had coaxed Gabby’s hair into smooth curls and confined them away from her face with a bandeau.
To Quill’s intense irritation, Gabby’s face lit up when she saw that Peter was in the breakfast chamber.
“Good morning, Peter!” she said happily. And then, “Hello, Quill.”
“Good morning, Miss Jerningham, Miss Phoebe,” Peter responded, rather more coolly. Mornings were never Peter’s favorite time of day. But he felt it behooved him to wrench himself out of bed at this untimely hour in order to escort his betrothed to a mantua-maker. He’d slay himself if any of his friends glimpsed his future wife in those appalling garments she affected.
Peter waited until Gabby and Phoebe had been given breakfast by the footman. “After you break your fast, I shall escort you to the establishment of Madame Carême,” he announced.
“How lovely,” Gabby said, helping herself lavishly to more jelly. “Do you know, this is the most delicious toast I have ever eaten in my life. What kind of jelly is this, Phillip?”
To Peter’s horror, he realized that Gabby was addressing the footman. And the said footman was smiling back at her as if they were equals. “It is blackberry jelly, miss.”
Phillip snapped back to attention against the wall, instinctively sensing Peter’s infuriated eyes on him.
“Mmmm,” Gabby said dreamily. “I love blackberry jelly. What do you think, Phoebe?”
Phoebe looked doubtfully at the jelly. “My ayah never let me have sugared things on my toast because they may make me fat. And then I could not get married.”
“Your ayah was a tyrant! Try this, sweetheart.”
Peter frowned. To his mind Gabby was the one who should be avoiding sugared things. It could just be the dress, of course, but she looked a wee bit plumper than was advisable, given the French style of clothing that was popular in London. Still, that was a topic he could bring up in private.
Gabby turned back to him, delicately licking her lower lip. Peter’s frown darkened.
