Rogue Grooms (39 page)

Emily braced her chin on her hand, watching him with fascination. He seemed a million miles away from her at that moment, his dark eyes seeing something beyond the Marbles, beyond even herself. “Tell me about your house there,” she urged.

His voice was quiet and deep as he spoke of that home, pale stucco drowsing behind a garden heavy with red and orange and white flowers, lotus and marigolds and jasmine, rich greenery heavy with the humidity hanging over all. Anjali collected pets there—a gazelle and a squirrel, as well as two little dogs the governor-general’s wife gave her—and they gamboled about under the draping pipal trees. In the mornings, servants hurried along the galleries, bearing trays of sweetmeats and tea, hanging out laundry, chasing the pets away from blossoms left on homemade shrines in the garden.

In the hot afternoons, when the light bore down like a bright white-yellow pall and spirits turned heavy, everything slowed down. Carved wooden shutters were closed, canvas shelters lowered over the galleries. Anjali would drowse there with her dogs, lying against the silk cushions while her ayah sang soft songs to her. David would sit close to her with his portable desk and his work, shooing the flying insects away from his documents with the quills of his pens.

In the evenings, the shutters opened again, letting night breezes and starlight sweep through the long, low rooms. Music would drift up over the walls, chanting and the rich strains of sitars. Even when he went out to a party at the home of one of the Anglo gentry, that music would trail after him, sweet and seductive.

Emily closed her eyes as he spoke, seeing all of this in her mind. The flowers, the heavy air, the music, even the pet gazelle—it all came to vivid, colorful life for her. Only very gradually did she realize that David had ceased speaking, his voice trailing away into the cool marble around them.

She opened her eyes, half-surprised to find herself not in an Indian gallery but in the dim environs of the British Museum. And to find David watching her.

She summoned up a small, strained smile for him. “It sounds—amazing. I imagine I will never see it, though.”

“And why is that?”

“A lady—a duke’s sister—could never hope to travel so very far alone. Alex and my mother might allow me to go to Brighton or maybe even France or Italy, but hardly Calcutta! Your words took me there, though. It must be just as I imagine it—strange and unearthly beautiful. How glorious your life must have been there! I always thought it must be.”

“I thought of you over all those years, too, Emily. Every day, I think.” He leaned closer to her, their arms and shoulders pressed together, warm and intimate even through layers of silk and wool and blasted propriety. “I wondered what your life was like, how you were growing up. What you would be like as a lady.”

Emily stared at him, mesmerized. She had always thought about him, of course, but she had imagined he forgot about her in that new life of his. She was just the silly, tomboyish girl who followed him all about, and in Calcutta he was surely surrounded by kohl-eyed beauties.

The thought that he had remembered her, speculated on her growing-up, was intoxicating.

“And how did I grow up?” she whispered.

He grinned at her, his dimples flashing enticingly. “Extraordinarily well, I would say. You are beautiful, Emily. And so kind to everyone, especially my daughter. You have not been hardened by London Society, as so many are. The years have been good to you.”

At this reminder of the past, of what she had truly come here to tell him, Emily turned away from the glow in his eyes. She stared at Hestia’s draperies, suddenly deeply chilled. She wrapped her arms about herself, and murmured, “They were not always so fine as they are now—the years, I mean.”

“What are you talking about, Emily? Your family is obviously happy, and no lady of the
ton
could have a lovelier smile than you do.”

“I lost my smile for a long time. Before Alex came back from Spain and met Georgina, many things happened to my family. Things I would want to never think of again.”

“Then do not think of them!” David seized her hand in his, his gloved fingers strong around her own. “Emily, the last thing I would want to do is make you unhappy, make you speak of unpleasant matters you would rather forget. I would be a poor friend to bring even a speck of unhappiness into your life.”

Emily folded her free hand around their clasped fingers, holding them together. She stared hard at their embrace, unable to look into his eyes, his beautiful face. If she even glimpsed him, she could never tell him this.

“No, David, I must say these things to you. I must tell you the truth; it is why I met you here today. But please, please don’t utter a word until I am finished.”

“Very well, Emily,” he answered softly. “Tell me anything you like. I will listen.”

Still clinging to his hand, Emily took a deep breath and launched into her old tale. She told him all about her mother’s riding accident soon after David and his father left England—the accident that left her still confined to her chair. She spoke of her father’s death, and Damien’s disastrous reign as duke. Of how their sudden lack of fortune left her to make ends meet at Fair Oak, to take care of their mother and maintain their good name.

Finally, she came to the day Damien took the Star away. She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could and sped through the story, her voice cracking.

“. . . and so you see, David,” she finished. “I know that you wanted to ask me about the Star; I am sure you must want it back. It is yours! And my family stole it. I am so very sorry. I can never say that enough. You must hate me now. You must be sorry you ever stood as my friend!”

David said nothing, but neither did he let go of her hand. His clasp tightened around hers convulsively, and she felt the stiffness of his shoulder against hers.

Slowly, very slowly, she opened her eyes and dared to peek up at him. He stared away, over her head, and his handsome features were taut. He was the very portrait of suppressed anger.

Emily tried to pull her hand from his, to move her loathsome presence away so he would not have to look at her and her betrayal. But he refused to release her. Indeed, his other arm came around her shoulders and held her close. His eyes as he stared down at her were burning black.

“How dare he?” David growled, in a voice she had never heard from him before. “A brother is meant to protect his sister, to hold her safe, not throw her into poverty and dishonor. How could Damien have even called himself a man after such disgrace? He had no honor. No strength.”

Emily felt a prickling behind her eyes, a harbinger of tears. She could
not
cry now! She had refused to show tears for all this time, refused to be less than perfectly proud. Even when neighbors whispered and snickered about her old gowns, she would not lower her chin an inch. She was a Kenton, and Kentons were never ashamed, even when their hearts burned with it.

She blinked hard, and said thickly, “He—he had a sickness for gambling, and for other shameful things as well.”

“Drink and whores? That is no excuse, Emily. He was a duke. He owed his family and title a great responsibility. And he did not fulfill it. He left his mother behind to illness, his sister to hard work a lady should never know—and he ended by stealing from my family.”

“I should have stopped him!” Emily cried, frantic. “I should have known he would come for the Star and hidden it from him. I should have run after him when he took it—”

“Emily!” David said firmly, seizing her by the shoulders and forcing her to face him, to be still. “None of this is on your head. None of it! You were always honorable. You took care of your mother and your tenants when your brothers could not. You never could have saved the Star from Damien’s greed—no one could.”

Emily did cry then. Great, salty tears that ran down her cheeks and splashed onto David’s wrist. She pressed hard at her lips with her gloved hand, but the tears would not be stopped. She had thought David would hate her when he discovered what happened. Instead, he was angry with
Damien.
He called her honorable, he held her close to him.

For so long, she had felt all alone, even in Alex and Georgina’s warm home. Now, suddenly, she was not alone. It was too much for all her locked-up emotions to bear.

“I should have tried harder to stop him,” she sniffled. “You were my best friend, David, and I disappointed you.”

He gave her a wry smile. “Emily, you could never, ever disappoint me.” He reached inside his coat for a handkerchief and pressed it into her hand. “Now, here, my brave girl. Dry your eyes before someone notices us and we are ejected from the museum for causing a scene.”

Emily gave a watery laugh, and mopped at her eyes and cheeks. Now that a measure of her good sense was returning, she was glad their corner was so ill-lit—her face was surely a mottled mess. “Indeed, you are right. Damien was the one who took the Star, but I am the one left with the consequences. I know you wanted it back, David.”

He sat back on the bench, stretching his long legs out before him with a deep sigh. “Yes, I did. Or rather, my grandmother did. Does.”

“Your grandmother?”

“Ah, yes. You see, Emily, I have my own tale to tell you.”

“A tale?” Emily said warily. “I like tales—usually. Unless they are like my own.”

David smiled gently. “You say you enjoy stories of India. And this one is full of curses and spirits and all manner of exciting events. And, according to my grandmother, it is even true.”

Emily was intrigued, despite everything there was to worry about at this moment. There was a childlike part of herself, hidden in her heart, that did still revel in fairy tales. “About the Star?”

“Yes. You see, when my grandparents were first married, they were unable to have a child. My grandmother made many sacrifices, visited many shrines. One night, after praying at a temple to the god Shiva, she had a vision.”

“A vision?”

“A dream, if you will. She dreamed that Shiva, who is a god of contradictions—the dance and stillness, bounty and wrath, destruction and fertility—told her he would grant her wish if she would bring him the great sky-stone. The most beautiful of all jewels.”

Emily was mesmerized by the flow of his deep, rich voice, and the strange story he told. In her mind’s eye, she could see his grandmother as a beautiful, dark young woman swathed in bright silks, kneeling at the feet of the many-armed god. “And that was the Star?”

“The Star of India, yes. It belonged to my great-grandfather. He wore it in his turban, and was deeply proud of it. In a land of glorious jewels, the Star was special. But, as much as he treasured the jewel, he treasured the dream of grandsons even more.”

“So, he gave her the sapphire.”

“He did. And, that very same day, she and my grandfather went back to the temple and laid the Star at Shiva’s feet. Nine months later, my uncle was born. Six more children followed, including my mother, who was said the be the most beautiful woman in Bengal.”

“The sacrifice worked!”

“It would appear so.”

“But then what went wrong?”

“My mother grew up, and met my father, who was in the army in Calcutta. They met in the marketplace and fell instantly in love. She wanted to give him something extraordinary to prove the depth of her devotion. The finest thing she knew of was the Star. She saw it often, for my grandmother liked to take her children back to the temple to make sacrifices in thanks.”

“Was your mother not afraid to take the jewel from its sacred spot?” Emily whispered.

A ghost of a smile drifted across David’s lips. “My mother was not a superstitious woman. She converted to Christianity when she married my father, and she did not fear Shiva’s wrath. Very soon after she gave him the Star, and when I was a small child, my father’s older brother died and he was called back to England to take up the earldom. Only after my parents departed Calcutta did my grandmother discover what her daughter had done.”

“And then what did she do?” Emily asked.

“I was only a tiny child then, but my grandmother’s servants say she wailed and cried, and broke everything in her chambers. She went back to the temple to beg forgiveness, and that night she had another dream.”

“Or vision.”

“Yes, another vision. Shiva said that her family would be cursed until the Star was returned to him.”

“Oh,” Emily breathed. In her imagination, the museum around them had disappeared completely. She was in a humid-heavy temple, surrounded by the thick scents of incense and jasmine—feeling the inescapable weight of a curse falling over herself and her family. She could not breathe; her breath caught in her throat, strangling her.

Emily reached up to loosen the ribbons of her bonnet, trying not to reveal the depth of her reaction. She hated for David to think her an even bigger fool than he surely already did. “What happened?”

David shrugged. “It appeared her curse came true. My mother died very young, in childbirth. My father nearly went mad with grief, and he died of yellow fever soon after we returned to India. Rupasri also died young.”

Emily’s family, too, had been touched by this litany of despair, she realized with a shock. Her mother’s accident, her father’s early death, Damien’s wasted life. Could it all have been the fault of the Star?

Do not be stupid, Emily,
she told herself sternly.
This is the nineteenth century, not the Middle Ages. There are no such things as curses.

Still, a tiny sense of disquiet reverberated in her heart.

“Do—do you believe in this curse, David?” she said slowly.

He stared at her closely. “No. Bad things happen to all of us in this world. I suppose it
is
a curse, but the curse is called life.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“However, my grandmother believes entirely in this curse. Before I left India, she charged me with recovering the jewel. I love her, Emily—she was like a true mother to me when my parents died. She is very old now, and I do not want her to live out the rest of her years uneasy because of this.”