The Bengal Rubies

by Lisa Bingham

  “Tell me.”

  “I tried to run away.”

  “What happened?”

  Her lashes shut and the tears eased free. “At first, my father was merely angry at the attempts.”

  “And then?”

  She clutched at the fabric of his shirt. “He hired guards. They took me back to the academy then stayed to watch me.”

  “Did you try to leave again?”

  She nodded, resting her forehead on his chest. “Once or twice. Each time, I was punished and brought back.”

  “Where did he take you then?”

  She shuddered, remembering the dark, the dank smells, the scuttle of mice.

  “Where, Aloise?”

  She recalled the burly guards outside her door. Now and again, the guards grew bored and would try to join her in her chamber. They would back her against the wall, grope at her breasts. She would allow them to kiss her. Once. Twice. Just enough to allay their suspicions, then kick them and dart for freedom. Each time, her father’s men found her. Punished her.

  “Where did he hide you?”

  She didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to remember. She reared back, but he would not release her. “What do you want?”

  The room pulsed in a long, aching silence. Then he finally uttered a single word. “Justice.”

  “Don’t you mean revenge?”

  “The words are but two sides to the same coin.”

  “What has my father ever done to warrant your enmity?”

  “Taken what was mine.”

  “Yours?”

  He did not comment further.

  “What do you want of me?”

  “Your help.”

  “I can’t help you. My father doesn’t care about me. I have nothing to offer your cause.”

  “But you do.” He stepped closer, so close that she could not mistake that there had been a subtle shifting in attitude. Somehow, she sensed they were no longer speaking so much about her father, as about her. “You have much to offer.”

  His touch slid from her wrist to her elbow, carefully avoided her injury, then cupped her shoulders. “I’m not as blind as Oliver Crawford, cherie. I see what treasures you offer. Great beauty, wit, intelligence.”

  “My father doesn’t hold such things dear.”

  “I do.”

  “How will that bring about justice? My father cares little for anything but his name, his money, and those damned Bengal Rubies.”

  “He wants a grandson.”

  The words shuddered in the room and Aloise grew still, the tears drying on her cheeks. Surely, he couldn’t mean … he didn’t want …

  But as she looked deep in his eyes, she thought she understood his objective.

  “You are the one person who can thwart him, Aloise.”

  She slowly retreated.

  “Even now, your father has invited a half-dozen men to Briarwood. All of them can give him the title and the heir he seeks. In exchange, he will part with the one thing he has to bargain.”

  “The rubies.”

  He nodded.

  “No. My father might have done many things in the past that I disagreed with, but he would never barter me. He merely means to see me married.”

  “He intends to let a half-dozen men barter for your hand.”

  Prospects. Mr. Humphreys’s last words to her had been of matrimonial prospects.

  She felt a wave of embarrassment, a surge of disgust. She’d known there had been no love lost to her on Oliver Crawford’s part, but she had not known to what depths he would sink to obtain his own ends.

  “One of my men has been privy to a list of a good portion of the prospective grooms. They average between the ages of seventeen and three-and-forty.”

  Aloise knew he spoke the truth. Hadn’t she already suffered beneath her father’s matchmaking attempts?

  “They are a hard lot, Aloise. Penniless, they will sell their titles and their freedom for a handful of jewels. Jewels reported to bless their owner and curse his enemies.” His voice grew low and silky. “Is that what you want? To be wed to such a man?”

  She gazed wildly about her, feeling the light dim, the walls shrink to suffocate her. She couldn’t go back to that kind of life. She would rather die than return to her father’s bruising reign.

  Rushing toward Slater she allowed him to see a portion of her panic. “Please, let me go! I won’t tell anyone that I’ve been here. I’ll disappear, leave the country, vanish as if I’d never been. My father will never find me, I assure you, and you can avenge yourself of whatever wrongs my father has committed against you.” When he did not respond, she added, “Please.” Slowly sinking to the floor, she hugged his knees. “Please, I beg of you!”

  The answering silence was so long, so fraught with tension, she feared he had not heard her. But when she glanced up, she found a startling look on his face. His skin had grown white, his normally inscrutable mien haunted. As if he had seen a specter and could not reckon with the fact. He brushed at the hair that tumbled over her forehead, and if Aloise had not known better, she would have said he trembled.

  “Will you let me go?” she asked when he did not speak for some time.

  He slowly inhaled, as if to clear his mind of his own brand of demons. “No.” His voice was curiously garbled.

  “No?” She had bared herself to him. She’d dropped all walls of pride and let him see the aching little girl within, and for that he had refused her.

  Angry, she bounded to her feet, but he caught her by the wrist, pulling her back. She struggled, but he held her fast, finally bringing her so tightly against him that she forgot to fight.

  His expression was sad. Aching. “If it were only you or I who must deal with the consequences, I would let you go, Aloise. I would take you away myself.” When his voice grew husky, he visibly swallowed. “But there are other people your father has hurt. Their ghosts cry out for reprisal.”

  “You, I suppose, must hear their pleas,” she added scathingly.

  Rather than commenting on her sarcasm, he took her challenge seriously. “I cannot ignore them.” He cupped her face. “I tried—dear heaven, how I tried.” His thumb teased the corner of her lips. “For that, I unknowingly allowed an innocent to be hurt for my own insensitivity.”

  She grew brittle, still, somehow sensing he was speaking of her.

  “I should have tried to stop your father years ago, but until now, I haven’t had the means available to do such a thing.”

  “No one can stop him.”

  “You can. You have a great power at your disposal. I can show you how. I can help you defeat him.”

  “By disappearing,” she insisted.

  “By staying.”

  “He won’t find me if I leave.”

  “He would track you to hell and beyond. He’ll never let you go.”

  Aloise could hardly breathe. He was right. She knew he was right.

  “There is only one way to prevent him from continuing to hurt you, Aloise. One way.” He stepped closer, so close that the scent of male musk inundated her senses. His thighs crowded her own, burning through the fragile weave of her gown. His hands splayed over her back, urging her to lift toward him, even as his head bent.

  “Marry me.”

  Chapter 14

  Slater had stunned her, he knew that by the way her eyes widened and her heart pounded so hard he could see the fluttering of her gown.

  “No.” Slater sensed the word was a denial of the idea, not the proposition.

  “He will see you married to a man of his choice, Aloise. He will use force or trickery, but he will have his way.”

  She shook her head, looking altogether too young, too vulnerable.

  “He will wait until you bear a child. A boy. Then he’ll kill you too.”

  He thought she would resist such a statement, but a curious acceptance spread over her features.

  “I know.”<
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  For an instant, he thought he’d imagined the words. But she wrapped her arms around his back and held him close.

  “I know. He has already tried.”

  Slater felt an iciness enter his veins. Then an anger. An overwhelming fear.

  “He’s tried?”

  She ducked her head. “My father does not care for my independence, nor for my attempts to escape. The last time, he took me to Loire, locked me away from society, and fed me nothing but bread and water.”

  If only Slater had known. The omnipresent guilt and remorse he’d felt for fifteen years threatened to choke him. Why hadn’t he scoured the countryside for her? Why hadn’t he tried harder to find Aloise? She’d told him earlier that she’d been imprisoned in Loire. He’d spent enough time in France that he could have found her had he known where to begin.

  She backed away, inch by inch by inch. Once out of his arms, she reached for the fastenings to her dressing gown. She did not speak, she did not look at him. Slater found he couldn’t move as the garment dropped to the floor.

  Her fingers moved to the tiny satin-covered buttons at the neck of her night rail. They served as little more than a decoration due to the billowing style of the gown, but she loosed them to a point near her navel. A V of delicate, velvet flesh appeared to his gaze, bringing an inappropriate wave of need, of incredible want. Holding the fabric to her breasts to shield at least a portion of her modesty, she bunched the fabric up so that the yoke fell from her shoulders and draped to her hips.

  “My father has a walking stick,” she said, yanking his thoughts away from her delectable shape, then confusing him with the abrupt change in subject.

  “It is a lovely piece, carved of mahogany with a silver tip at one end and the head of a snake at the other. I always thought his choice in animals particularly fitting.” She watched him, clearly debating whether or not to continue. Something she saw must have convinced her that she could trust him.

  “The cane disguises a riding quirt inside. But since injuring his knee a dozen years ago, my father does not ride. Still, he manages to use the piece with great regularity.”

  She turned then, exposing the breadth of her back.

  Slater felt a sickness seep into his stomach, a heaviness into his chest. He’d seen her several times dressed in little more than a chemise or the wrapping of a comforter. But he’d never seen her bare back. Her skin had been defiled by crisscrossing scars. The welts covered her shoulder blades and extended as far as her hips, colors of ivory to pale pink attesting to the passage of years, the extent of her punishment.

  “I receive one strike for each hour of freedom.”

  “Dear God.”

  A bile rose in his throat as Slater realized he was partially responsible for her plight. Damnit! Why hadn’t he helped Jeanne? Why hadn’t he helped Aloise?

  He went to her then, enfolding her in his embrace, tucking her head beneath his chin. An overwhelming sense of responsibility nearly took his breath away. He should have moved heaven and earth to come to Aloise’s aid. He should have known when Crawford left her injured and bleeding that her childhood would have been a cruel one.

  He would avenge the wrongs that had been done against her.

  As God was his witness, he would see Crawford paid in kind.

  Her voice grew choked. “I always thought there was something wanting in me. Something so horrible, that my father couldn’t bear to be near me. I knew it was my fault. Mine. But over the years, I learned that he was the one in need. He’d been born without heart, without conscience.”

  Slater held her closer, closer, wanting to absorb the pain, the ache. He opened his mouth to refute such a statement; but how could he deny the truth?

  Footsteps thundered down the hall, followed by a pounding at the door. “Slater? Slater!”

  Slater’s arm tightened automatically. “Damnit, Will. Not now.”

  “He’s here. Crawford is here.”

  Both Slater and Aloise turned to stone. Then she twisted to look at him, a fear such as he had never seen glazing her face.

  “The man’s hopping mad. Evidently, the spy we discovered on the ridge returned to tell him that a woman tried to escape through the ballroom window. Crawford is sure it was his daughter. He has enough men with him to storm a castle and he’s bound and determined to search every inch of Ashenleigh.”

  Slater grasped her arm. “Come with me.” Unlocking the door, he threw it open, confronting Will Curry and a concerned Georgette still clad in her nightclothes.

  “Tell the men to assemble downstairs. They are to appear as dissolute as their reputations—gaming, drinking, cards.”

  Will nodded.

  “Georgette, if you would be so kind as to play a jest with me.” Slater motioned to the bed behind him.

  Georgette smiled in delight. “If eet eez Ollie Crawford you intend to dupe, eet will be my pleasure.” She sauntered toward the bed and settled on it like the grandest of paramours.

  Curry grinned and threw her a smacking kiss of approval.

  “Will, allow Crawford to ring two or three times, then let him in. Give him free rein of the house. Let him search to his heart’s content. Just see to it that he doesn’t break anything. Then see to it that Miss Nibbs brings up that bathwater she tried to deliver earlier.”

  Will nodded and hurried to the stairs.

  Slater caught the pallor of Aloise’s skin. She shook uncontrollably, so much so, the fabric of her gown rustled in warning. After all she’d been through, she was near to breaking and the thought caused him to feel a pang of protectiveness. Fastening her night rail and securing the buttons to her robe, he tenderly grasped her shoulders.

  “I won’t let him take you. Will you trust me in that?”

  She nodded, but it was obvious that she didn’t think him capable of fulfilling such a vow.

  “Please, Aloise. Believe in me.” He framed her face, then bent to place a kiss on her forehead, her cheeks, and finally her lips. The caress was short, but telling, conveying to them both that emotions other than anger boiled beneath the surface. But at the pounding of the door in the vestibule below, Slater knew he hadn’t the time to decipher such an incredible experience.

  Taking Aloise’s hand, he led her to a panel next to the mantel of the fireplace. Twisting the mask above, he released the latch of a door hidden to the side.

  “You’ll be safe here. As long as you don’t make a sound.”

  She nodded, failing to choke back a small whimper of fear as he began to shut her inside.

  “You’ll be safe,” he promised again, kissing his finger and easing it through the sliver of space to press it against her lips. “Trust me.”

  Then he closed the door and hurriedly stripped off his shirt, jacket, and hose. Purposely, he scattered the garments about the floor as if he had indulged in a night of passion, then slid beneath the covers just as the shattering sound of the front portal jarring loose resounded through the house.

  “Where is my daughter?”

  The words carried easily, said with overt disdain and fury.

  Slater heard Will’s muttered reply, then listened intently as it became quite obvious that Oliver Crawford had begun his search.

  It took little less than five minutes for Crawford to make his way upstairs, slamming doors, bumping furniture, until at long last, he entered the Rose Room.

  Seeing Slater ensconced on the bed with a tousled maiden, his beefy features grew red in fury, so much so that Slater thought the beads of sweat on his powdered forehead must fairly sizzle.

  “Daughter!”

  He fairly barked the word. Slater heard a slight stirring from behind the wall, but Georgette turned to face her accuser, obviously startling Crawford with the fact that she was a stranger.

  “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of an introduction,” Slater drawled, painfully schooling his features into a mask of indifference as he found himself face-to-face wit
h his enemy.

  Each muscle in his body coiled in anticipation. This was the man who had so callously murdered Jeanne. This was the man who had killed two of the witnesses to such an event. Would he remember the third? Would he look at Slater and see Matthew Waterton?

  “Where is she?”

  Using every ounce of control he possessed, Slater lifted a single brow in inquiry. “Who?”

  “My daughter.”

  He didn’t recognize him. Crawford didn’t remember the young man he’d threatened.

  The thought brought a burst of anger. Had Jeanne meant so little to him? Had Matthew Waterton’s identity been considered so paltry a trade for Crawford’s freedom?

  “Well, man! Speak up! Where is my daughter?”

  “I have positively no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Crawford stamped into the room, the rust satin of his breeches slithering in displeasure. “Don’t play games with me, sir. I’ve had enough of those already.”

  “Indeed.”

  “It was your phaeton that took my daughter, your coach I followed through the whole blasted countryside. Your men admitted as much days ago.”

  “I’m dreadfully sorry you thought the conveyance held your daughter, but I believe my assistant told you at the time that my coach and four were stolen by one of the hostlers and a cheeky housemaid. Do you remember her name, Georgette?”

  She shook her head.

  “So sorry.”

  Oliver Crawford scowled. “Who are you?”

  “The name is McKendrick.” Slater leaned back against the headboard, lazily crossing his arms behind his head. But there was nothing lazy about the tension that coiled inside him. “Slater McKendrick. I’m sorry I haven’t seen to introductions until now, but I’ve been so busy organizing the estates, you know.”

  “Your bathwater and your tea, sir.”

  Slater grew even more still as Miss Nibbs stepped into the room. Setting an elaborate tray on the table by the fire, she motioned for the footmen to fill the tub. Through it all, Slater watched Crawford, looking for the slightest hint of recognition on the man’s behalf. Did he remember the old woman he’d terrorized? Did he remember Miss Nibbs?

  He couldn’t be sure, but he thought a slight frown of confusion touched the man’s brow. As if his memory had been pricked ever so slightly.