Duty Before Desire (31 page)

Poorvaja gripped Arcadia's chin and turned her head. “That's how you get a baby.” The memory of something lost and sad echoed faintly through her words. Finished with the
kajal
, she turned to Arcadia's attire laid out on the bed.

Twisting in the chair, Arcadia's hands gripped the posts. Peeking from beneath the edge of a white sari banded with blue and orange, Poorvaja's bare brown feet were small and worn. Strands of silver that had not been there when they left India now threaded through the dark braid hanging heavy down her spine.

“There will be no baby,” she directed to her ayah's back. “We're going home.”

Poorvaja's hands stilled. “The nonsense you talk. Lord Sheridan lives here.”

“He will continue to do so. I told you I wouldn't stay here.”

“That was before. Stand up.”

Poorvaja helped Arcadia into a white petticoat, then an underskirt and blouse of crimson silk, the skirt, neckline, and short sleeves heavily adorned with gold beading and embroidery in intricate paisley and scrolls.

Practiced fingers tightened the skirt's laces at her waist. “You might ask your husband to send me back to India.”

“I would never send you away, Poorvaja. You know that.”

“I wasn't giving voice to fear, Jalanili; I was suggesting. You don't need me anymore.”

A bead of anxiety trickled down Arcadia's spine. “That's not true. I'll always need you. Besides, we needn't bother Lord Sheridan for the cost of your fare. Soon enough, I'll pay for our passage myself. You and I will sail home together, and England will be nothing more than a story we scare ourselves with before bed.”

And if, late at night, she sometimes thought of kissing an arrogant wastrel with strong arms and smiling eyes and sensuous lips, well, that was her own souvenir of the journey.

A sound of warning rose in Poorvaja's throat, but Arcadia forestalled her fussing by pointing to a soft parcel wrapped in white paper. “Is that from Madame Doucet?”

The day after the betrothal ball, Arcadia had returned to the modiste's shop. When Arcadia described what she wanted to wear for her wedding celebration, the Frenchwoman's eyes had gleamed with avarice born not of greed, but of ingenuity. “Mademoiselle asks the impossible,” she'd alleged, even as she began tearing books of design from a shelf. “No bride has ever done such a thing. They'll be talking about you for months.” She slanted a smile at Arcadia. “
Mais,
they'll be talking about me for years.” Summoning her squadron of assistants, she had dispatched several to scour fabric supply warehouses for the beaded crimson silk Arcadia now wore, sent another to the dyer, and set her best seamstress to the task of sketching out the embroidery pattern.

“Delivered this morning, while you were at church.” Gently, Poorvaja unwrapped the parcel and unfolded the bundle within, a red, veil-thin sari, embroidered with peacock feathers of gold and blue and green. Round gold beads between the feathers added weight to the fabric to assist in the draping, as well as providing luster.

It might have been an overly sentimental gesture for a bridegroom who didn't intend to keep his bride, but Arcadia meant the feather design to acknowledge the motif that had brought them together—if only temporarily.

“Beautiful,” Arcadia breathed, running her hand beneath the silk and marveling at the delicate transparency. “I can't believe I get to wear such a glorious thing.” She lifted her arms for Poorvaja to commence wrapping.

“Not yet.” Scurrying to a wardrobe, Poorvaja pulled out a small wooden chest, which she placed on the dressing table and gestured.

“What's this?” Arcadia asked, bemused. She flipped an aged brass clasp and lifted the lid. On a bed of blue silk rested a jumble of golden chains and bangles.

“From my wedding,” Poorvaja said. “And now for yours.”

Heart in her throat, Arcadia withdrew from the cask a bracelet of green glass and another of brass. None of it was very fine—Poorvaja had been the daughter of a younger son and the wife of a farmer—but all of it shiny and bright from fresh polishing. She cast a look of disbelief at her ayah. “You brought this from India?”

“Do not cry! You'll spoil the
kajal
. I told you, you must let me have my fun. Sit.”

Dazed, she returned to her seat before the vanity mirror. Poorvaja slid numerous bracelets onto each arm and placed earrings dangling with leaf-shaped spangles at her lobes. The ayah fitted a headpiece next, two golden chains draping to either side of Arcadia's hair, with a third that nestled in her part. A medallion rested in the center of her forehead above her eyebrows, a golden filigree disc with three small pearls dangling from the bottom edge.

A knock sounded at the door. Poorvaja opened it, and Lady Delafield entered, her spare cheeks ruddy from sipping champagne punch since breakfast. “Niece, I'd like a word,” she said. With a hand clutching a cup of punch, she waved Poorvaja out of the room.

“Of course, Aunt.” Arcadia's adornments jangled softly as she turned her head.

“Great Jehoshaphat, what are you wearing?” Lady Delafield demanded.

“A new dress,” Arcadia calmly replied, standing to show it off, “and Poorvaja's jewelry.”

Her ladyship gawped. “You should be wearing Lucretia's jewelry, not the maid's.”

Arcadia let the comment about Poorvaja pass. Her aunt refused to acknowledge the bond between the Indian woman and her niece. Trying to make her understand would be a waste of breath. “I wore my mother's pearls this morning.”

Lady Delafield crossed the room and made as if to snatch off the headpiece. Arcadia raised a staying hand and swiftly backed away. Her aunt glimpsed Arcadia's palm and let out a low moan. “You must remove this heathen frippery at once. Lord Lothgard will accuse me of foisting a Gypsy onto his family. What will Lord Sheridan think?”

At that, the corners of Arcadia's mouth lifted. What would Lord Sheridan think, indeed. “We shall find out, won't we?”

Lady Lothgard let out another moan and sank her head against one of the bedposts. “We are ruined.”

“What was it you wished to discuss, Aunt?”

Her ladyship lifted her head. “You being motherless, it is my Christian duty to inform you of the wifely duties you must soon undertake. Your husband will have certain expectations of you—”

“Thank you, Aunt, but this really isn't necessary.”

“—to which you must accede with a cheerful heart. Despite the”—she gulped down some punch—“indelicate nature of the task, it is required for the creation of children, and for your husband's comfort.”

His comfort? Was Arcadia to be as a favorite old chair, then? “And my comfort, as well?”

“A lady takes comfort in wisely managing her household, in easing her husband's burdens and not adding to them with imprudent expenditures or overwrought emotions.”

Arcadia recalled Lady Delafield's frequent requirement of her smelling salts, but prudently said no more.

“Well,” her aunt chirped, “I'm glad we had this talk so I could clarify matters for you.”

She smiled. “As am I, Aunt.”

Lady Delafield's “talk” was as illuminating as a gutted candle. Thankfully, Arcadia had some rudimentary inkling of the marriage act from snatches of conversation overheard in the
zenana
. Too, the response of her body to Sheri's kisses had offered a clue. The feeling of his hard thigh rubbing between her legs and the turgid ridge of his manhood hard against her abdomen had been another.

Her aunt left, and Poorvaja returned to wrap Arcadia in the splendid sari Madame Doucet had created, tucking, pleating, and draping, finally settling the last bit over Arcadia's hair and shoulders. Poorvaja stepped back, hands pressed to her heart, pride and affection beaming in her eyes.

“Will I do?” Arcadia teased.

“Come see.” Poorvaja led her to a full-length mirror in the corner. A woman with sultry, mysterious eyes peered back, the hard angles of her face softened by the cloud of red silk framing her features. In deference to her English family—and the cold—Arcadia did not go barefoot as a bride in India might, but instead wore red satin shoes over silk stockings.

There was a tapping at the door. It opened a bit, then Sheri's voice. “Miss Poorvaja, I've come to take my bride down to supper. You've monopolized her since breakfast, but you must relinquish her at last.”

“Come in, Sheri,” Arcadia called. She turned to the door, butterflies suddenly stirring in her stomach. “I'm ready.”

He entered. Stopped, she thought, to give her fluttering heart a moment to recover from the shock of his elegant male beauty. He'd changed into evening attire, a black coat and white satin knee breeches. A silver waistcoat encased his broad chest. In a double column down the center, embroidered in sapphire thread, were those—

She stepped closer. Smiled. “Peacock feathers.” Her gaze lifted past the crisply perfect cravat to his parted, unsmiling lips and wide eyes.

Her own smile slipped. She should not have done this. It was too different, too much. When he told her not to change, he hadn't known that she'd spent most of her life before coming to London in saris, or that the only wedding celebrations she'd ever attended had been for Poorvaja's numerous cousins, or that Arcadia had never known to dream of her own wedding as being anything else.

His throat tightened on a swallow. “Look at you,” he breathed. “Look—” His hand came to his mouth. His head tilted as his eyes roamed every inch of her. He circled her slowly, pausing to examine an earring or brush a finger over the beading on her sleeve. She felt him stop behind her. The back of her neck prickled.

“Are you angry?” she forced out. The dress she'd worn this morning was somewhere about here.

“Angry?” His hands cupped her arms. His voice purred in her ear. “Ye gods, woman, I've never been less angry in my life.” A beat of silence, then a chuckle. “Peacock feathers. And I thought I was so clever. I should have known you'd take the wind from my sails, peahen.”

“We will look clever together,” she said, her spirits lifting once more.

He turned her around, his eyes alight with male appreciation. “You are exquisite, Lady Sheridan.” He brought her hand to his lips and turned it to brush his lips over the inside of her wrist. She sighed at the caress, even as she experienced a frisson of dismay.

Lady Sheridan.
Not even granted the dignity of her own name. She'd been given a courtesy title derived from another courtesy title. If he was Lord Nothing, the moon whose light was only a reflection of his father's, what did that make her? Less than nothing?

“What is this?” His finger traced the intricate reddish-brown designs on her palm.

“Mehndi,”
Poorvaja answered. “Do you like it?”

“It's astonishing. I've never seen anything like it. Did you do this, Miss Poorvaja?” His eyes flicked to the ayah. “Now I know what you've been doing all day. This must have taken hours.”

“We did it yesterday,” Arcadia said. His finger continued following the looping scrolls and flowers. Her scalp tingled.

“Yesterday?” He lifted a brow. “Your hands were decorated like this in church this morning?”

Arcadia nodded. “Under my gloves, of course. Did I commit an Anglican mortal sin? Are you angry now?”

He grinned, the crooked, boyish smile that made her knees weak. “Are you mad? This is brilliant. To think, while I was admiring my pretty, modest bride,
this
was hiding just beneath her gloves. You little minx.”

He brought a finger to her chin and tilted her face, then touched his lips to hers. He brushed the tip of his nose lightly around the end of hers, then pressed another light kiss to her mouth. Arcadia's bones softened. A distant but steady thrumming began in her breasts and belly and between her legs. In her new red shoes, her toes curled.

“Supper, you said?”

Startled by Poorvaja's voice, Arcadia gasped, jerked her face away from Sheri's.

His lids drooped in a smoldering, private look that
promised
. Arcadia's toes curled tighter.

“I did, but before we go …” He reached into his inner pocket, then paused, his eyes still trained on Arcadia's.

Married.

He withdrew his empty hand. Tried another pocket. “Ah, here we are.” He pulled forth a small velvet pouch. “Just a small gift …” He winked at Arcadia, swiveled, and presented it to Poorvaja. “For you.”

She accepted it with visible uncertainty. Arcadia could not recall having ever seen Poorvaja receive a gift from a man before. The ayah tipped the pouch and exclaimed as a ring tumbled onto her palm. Her fingers shook as she picked it up. An aquamarine solitaire winked in the candlelight. “I will not be your second wife, you wicked man,” she blurted, but Arcadia could see how her friend struggled with emotion.

“It reminded me of the water,” Sheri said cryptically, “and I thought it might do the same for you.”

Blinking back tears, Poorvaja slid the ring onto her right hand. She swiped an eye with the edge of her sari.

Emotion welled inside Arcadia's chest. On the short list of things she would miss about England, the way Sheri always treated Poorvaja with such kindness and respect would be near the top.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her throat tight.

Sheri nodded. “And for you, my dear …” He reached behind his back, his hand returning with a flat, rectangular box, which he extended to her on his palms.

Inside, Arcadia found a double-strand necklace of golden citrines, the oval-cut stones set end to end. Arcadia's hand flew to her throat.

“I wanted to give you something with a little sparkle, but already you far outshine my gift. You needn't wear it.”

“But I want to,” Arcadia blurted before she could stop herself. She couldn't accept such a gift. It was far too valuable. What had he been thinking to purchase such a thing for the wife he wouldn't keep? Still, it couldn't hurt to wear the necklace just this once.