Never a Gentleman (46 page)

At the funeral, attended by Wellington himself, Grace had invited Aunt Dawes to come live with her. Facing her loss with the
kind of gruff courage that had endeared her to her formidable husband, Aunt Dawes had agreed, insisting that Grace needed
a chaperone. Surprisingly, she developed an exceptional affinity for Mr. Pitt, so that quite often she and Pitt and little
Ruchi could be found together, having tea and decorating hats. It gave Aunt Dawes purpose and Ruchi a grandmother. As for
the monkey, he looked surprisingly coy in a cottage bonnet.

“I think I’m early to bed tonight,” Grace told Breege as they walked through the green baize door into the front hallway.
“It’ll be another very long day tomorrow.”

Breege harrumphed. “Sure, you know stone layin’ is men’s work.”

Grace couldn’t help but smile. “I’ve waited my whole life for this, Breege. Let me enjoy it.”

Breege shook her grizzled head. “A body could enjoy it just as well from a few feet back.”

A body could certainly find it less painful, Grace admitted. Her leg hurt. Her back hurt. The blisters on her hands hurt.
But it felt delicious. She had worked hard, and she’d done it for what she wanted. The added bonus was that it had also been
what her little family wanted as well.

She passed the Red Parlor she had decorated in silk pillows and samovars. The library was filled with artifacts she had brought
home from Canada, and the morning room, with her majolica. She had saved the jade for her office, a paneled den she’d painted
cream to show off the shelves of luminous green. Her carpets were from Persia and her silk wall hangings from China, every
room an explosion of color and texture. And she was only getting started. She still had twenty more packing crates to dig
through.

As she passed the front hall table, she centered the small gold painted statue of Lord Ganesha, the elephant god. He was always
kept near the front door to bring in good luck. Grace knew she needed it now more than ever.

“You want a bath before bed?” Breege asked.

Grace almost groaned. “No. I’m too tired for even that.”

As every evening, she and Breege would part at the great stairway, Breege doing her final rounds before retiring to the housekeeper’s
suite and Grace climbing the stairs to
her own room. Their habit on parting had long been a nod of the head, a pat on the arm. Now Grace made it a point to hug the
hefty woman. Breege was still surprised by the gesture, but she hugged back with all her massive strength.

It was the greatest lesson Grace had learned in these last weeks. To never let anything keep you from letting those you loved
know how you felt. It was the surest way she knew to keep regret at bay.

God knew she had enough of that. It lay on her shoulders like a shroud, the weight of it eased only by the affection of her
friends. But she would never have the chance to tell Uncle Dawes how much he’d meant to her. She would never be able to hug
her father and tell him she loved him. She would never have her Grenadiers back, the friends she’d lost to countless battlefields
without ever thanking them for making an ugly, ungainly girl feel special.

But the worst regret followed her right up the stairs and into her bedroom. Lizzy was waiting when she walked into the room,
a flannel nightgown laid out on the bed.

“Oh, not flannel,” Grace objected. “I’ll be in it soon enough. What about my caftan?”

“Well, it’ll sure go better with the new furniture.”

Grace smiled. She had unpacked her first crate here. She had known from the day she’d walked into that
zenena
at fourteen what her bedroom would one day look like. Her walls were hung in orange and purple silk, the color of a desert
sunrise. The chandelier dripped multicolored glass petals, and the windows were draped in gold-embroidered saris. On the bed,
a low platform topped with a headboard of carved Ceylon teak, she had created a nest of silk pillows in a rainbow of colors;
lime, hot yellow, royal blue, peacock. A symphony of colors, a riot of hue.

She had kept her best artwork for these walls no one else saw. Her father had never realized just what kind of art she’d been
collecting in the Indian and Turkish bazaars all those years and had hidden away, or what it was the ladies of the harem had
taught her to paint. It was hidden away no longer. Her walls were populated by exquisitely beautiful women and men painted
in bright colors, caught in the eternal dance of erotic love. Knowing now exactly what it was those women felt as they smiled
up at their paramours, Grace battled a fresh wave of envy. They would forever be locked in the most intimate moment of life,
their pleasure at its pinnacle, their world captured in primal colors. While Grace, who had briefly touched that place, had
been forced back out into the darkness.

It was here she missed Diccan the most. Oh, she missed him other places. She thought of him every time she rode Epona. She
saw him lifting his quizzing glass at some of her renovations and putting on his best manners when asked to tea by Ruchi and
Aunt Dawes. She heard his laughter and smelled his sandalwood, and it stole some of the joy from her new life.

“Will there be anything else, Ma’am?” Lizzy asked.

“Thank you, no, Lizzy. Good night.”

Lizzy softly closed the door behind her, leaving Grace where she sat at her dressing table, her hair down and her nightwear
on. Feeling nostalgic, Grace fingered the sleek royal blue and gold silk of the caftan she’d found in Cairo. She so clearly
remembered the day she’d bought it, one of her first forays into the city. She could see the jumbled, teeming alleys of the
bazaar, where she’d been forced to duck to keep from knocking down the hanging merchandise: flower garlands, necklaces, copperware,
fabric and
rope and herbs. She could smell dust and spices, horses and camels, the exotic smoke of incense and the earthy tang of coffee.

Grace had thought it all magnificent: colors washed by the sun, voices raised in a dozen languages, men sitting cross-legged
on the ground as they haggled prices. She wished she could tell Diccan about it. She had the feeling that he loved travel
stories more than he’d let on.

Outside her open window, a brisk October breeze rustled in the trees. The sky, that peculiar peacock of fall, was lit by a
lone star. The sun was gone, and a long night was begun. It was the nights that bothered her most. Diccan came to her in the
nights, whispering in her ear, worshiping her body, accidentally scattering futile promises before her like rose petals.

It was in the night Grace admitted that the dream that had sustained her for so long was no longer enough. She had her home.
She had her little family. She had every ornament she had collected over the years to comfort her. And yet, the edge was gone
from her contentment. The colors weren’t as bright nor the accomplishments as satisfying. She couldn’t remember how to be
happy. Diccan had taken that with him.

“Will you tell me what you’re thinking?” she heard behind her.

The voice sounded so real that she gasped. Her heart began to race and her chest tightened. She looked up into her mirror,
searching the shadows behind her. She was so afraid she had summoned him, a delusion to soothe her loneliness. Tears stung
her eyes and clogged her throat.

It was another inheritance from her short marriage. She wept now. She wept when she got the news about Uncle Dawes, and she
wept when she removed her first pillow
from its crate. She was afraid she would weep now for nothing more than a chimera in the dark.

“Go away,” she said out loud, as if that could scare off her own pitiful dreams.

“And if I don’t?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, desperate for sanity. She couldn’t seem to stop trembling, though. Her heart wouldn’t slow.

“Open your eyes, Gracie,” he said, and she couldn’t help it. She did.

She braced herself for disappointment. Instead she received a shock. Her heart lurched into her throat, and her insides seemed
to melt. He had just stepped out of the shadows.

He looked tired. His corbeau coat and buckskins were a bit mussed, as if he’d been careless with them, something Grace could
never have imagined. But his eyes were still that ghostly gray, and his face still missed being handsome by a broad brow.
It was all she could do to keep from bowing with the pain of seeing him again.

“What are you doing here?”

“I had a bit of a break, and there was someone I needed to see.”

She swore her heart was going to tumble out of her chest. “There was?”

“There was. There’s only one problem.”

He stepped right up behind her, a dark fantasy reflected in her mirror. “It seems the monkey is still in my bed.”

She couldn’t help it. She laughed, an abrupt, surprised sound. “Don’t be silly. Mr. Pitt has no need for you now that Ruchi
and Aunt Dawes feed him teacakes and licorice.”

His eyes glinted with amusement and something Grace
was afraid to name. “A sad day when a man can’t even rely on his monkey.”

“Diccan.” He was so close he was stealing her breath. Her body recognized him and began to sing. “Why are you here?”

He stepped right up behind her and bent to rest his head atop hers, dark to light, fierce to frightened. “There still seems
to be a small argument that needs settling between us.”

She couldn’t even answer. Desire was so tangled up with terror that she couldn’t get a word past either. It seemed she didn’t
need to. Without asking permission, Diccan leaned closer and wrapped his hands around her to cup her breasts.

The shock froze her. The sweet pleasure melted her. The impossibility crippled her.

“You’ve taken to dyeing the rest of your hair to match your maiden-hair?” he asked, his voice a low rumble in her ear.

She sat as still as an animal caught in a hunter’s sights. She was trembling hard now. He was nibbling her ear, nuzzling her
hair, kneading her breasts. Sapping her reason like a siphon.

Before she could succumb, she yanked away and jumped to her feet, whirling to face him, her caftan swirling around her. Her
legs were so rubbery she had to clutch the dresser.

“No,” she said as clearly as she could before she couldn’t. “I
stopped
dyeing my hair. This is its natural color. ‘Whore’s red’ my mother used to call it. The vicar who baptized me at St. John’s
in Calcutta called it an abomination. So I bleached the sin out of it so no soldier would get the wrong idea. But I’m not
bleaching it back, ever again. This is who I am, Diccan. Now, I want to know what you want.”

His eyes widened just a bit, but he was smiling, and it ate at her strength. “Truly?”

She straightened, a pillar of dignity and hard-won pride. “Truly.”

Oddly, his smile only grew until it looked curiously relieved. “I assume you’ve gone on a decorating tear with all your collected
treasure?”

She refused to relax, struggling to understand. “I have.”

His smile just grew as he looked around. “Why didn’t you bring all this out when you decorated the townhouse? I never would
have left it.”

She realized she was gaping. “You
like
it?”

“Do you think you might have room for some crates I’ve collected?” Diccan was asking as he looked around at the symphony of
color. “Mostly from the Ottomans, but Russia, Finland, and Greece as well. I’ve had them stored until I had a place that I
could call my own.”

She kept shaking her head. “Why didn’t you
say
something? Do you know how much I loathe Wedgwood?”

“No more than I, I assure you. I’m sorry for that, too, Grace. I thought about telling you when I saw your crates, but things
were just too uncertain, and I was afraid to get too close.”

She nodded. “I know. I understand.”

He reached out a hand to cup her check. He was trembling. “Do you?” he asked, sounding sad. “I don’t see how.”

She laid her hand over his. “You were trying to keep me safe. Of course, I imagine it would have been a lot easier to bear
if you had just told me.”

“How could I…” His protest faded. “You’re right. I should have told you everything.”

She smiled. “I know.”

For a long moment, he just watched her. Finally, though, that sly smile reappeared.

“Did I see majolica in your crates?”

“In the morning room.” She pulled in an uncertain breath. “Now, you have to leave. We’re no longer married, and I don’t carry
on casual affairs.”

“I don’t carry on casual affairs either,” he retorted. “Not anymore.”

He tried to put his arms around her. Grace balked like a green horse.

Diccan must have seen something, because he looked even happier. “I should have known you’d need the whole tradition.” Reaching
into his pocket, he pulled something out. Flipping it open, he dropped to one knee.

Grace tried to back up. He caught her hand and held her in place.

“Grace Georgianna Fairchild, would you put this silly fribble out of his misery and marry him?”

Her brain froze. Her legs almost gave out on her. She couldn’t pull her gaze away from the ludicrously hopeful expression
on his face to see what was in the little jeweller’s box he held.

“Stop this,” she whispered, the pain tearing at her. “Please. I can’t…” She pressed her fingers against her mouth, as if it
would hold in every hope and dream and fear that threatened to tumble out.

He didn’t even seem to notice. “Did I tell you how much I love red hair, Grace? Real red hair, not that faded insult you had
when I met you. Hair the color of a sunset over the Pyramids. The color of fire and warmth and life.” His eyes looked alarmingly
sincere. “I came back before I knew your real hair color, so I guess I must love you without it. But I have to admit that
it adds a lovely piquancy to the deal. Don’t you think God considered it a huge joke that I
fell in love with you before I realized you were the woman of my dreams?”

He’d said it twice. He couldn’t mean it. She was afraid she would shake apart with the power of her emotions. Pain, longing,
hope, despair.

“You don’t think I’m serious,” he said, tilting his head in some surprise. He gave a frustrated sigh and put the ring away.
“Grace. Do you love me? It’s all I want to know.”