The Bride Wore Pearls (39 page)

Anisha didn’t answer but instead sat pensively for a time, one hand resting over his own, the warmth oddly comforting. After a few moments, she unfolded herself languidly and rose to pour more wine. Pressing a glass into his hands, she drifted to the narrow casement window overlooking the orchard.

Outside, water still rattled in the gutters and poured down the glass. The storm was vicious now, lightning splintering the sky as it crept ever closer. He watched Anisha quietly as she stood there, lithe and beautiful in the firelight, and wondered what she was thinking.

Most probably she was wishing she hadn’t come on this dreadful journey; that she could have been spared the ordeal of listening to him whine. Damn it, he
never
whined. Always, he had borne his sins and his grief in silence. And yet there had always been something about Anisha that tempted him to loosen his tongue—and his heart.

He should have seen it coming, he supposed. One could not maintain so close a friendship as they had without being ultimately drawn into that deepest of the intimacies; intimacies which had little to do with the bedchamber and everything to do with the soul.

It was easy to fall into bed with a woman. It was hard to confess the nagging uncertainties and harsh truths that haunted a man in the wee hours of the night when sleep would not come and circumstance compelled him to look back at what he’d made of his life.

Except with Anisha, it was not hard.

And that, he supposed, was the most telling truth of all.

She finished her wine slowly, her gaze still scanning the heavens, as if she saw past the raging storm. Perhaps she did. He had learned not to doubt her. The glass empty, Anisha set it on the windowsill. Suddenly, there came at once a frightful, splintering
ka-crack! ka-boom!
Loud as cannon fire, it lit the room, washing her in a ghostly glow that illuminated even the orchard far beyond.

“Come away from the glass, love,” he said, holding out his hand.

But it was as if she did not hear him. Instead, Anisha set her hand lightly to one of the leaded diamonds, as though she might reach through the pane for something far beyond.

“Nish?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

For a moment, he thought she mightn’t answer.

“I was thinking of Mamma,” she finally answered, her voice oddly flat. “It was her favorite thing, a purifying storm at nightfall. She always said it was the earth purging itself to breath free again.”

He smiled. “Von Althausen says it’s just releasing ozone,” he said, “whatever that is.”

“Oh, your brother Savant will not explain this one with his beakers and his books,” said Anisha certainly. “This has to do with the movement of the heavens. The timing of it, the lucidity the storm brings, the formations of the stars that precipitate it—and all of it taken together has meaning for you, Rance. The clarity you seek draws near. I am increasingly sure of it.”

As if he’d willed it, every hair on his neck prickled. “And what good will clarity do me if you’re struck dead?” he said, already exploding off the settle.

He was across the room in three strides, yanking Anisha from the glass and hurling her to the floor. Lightning split the heavens like the hand of God; an awful, cracking noise that reverberated to the rafters. From just beyond the window came the loud splintering of a tree cleaved apart. Thunder rolled overhead, seemingly into infinity, until at last quiet settled in again, broken only by the spatter of rain on the glass.

“Good God!” Pinned over her on the floor, he couldn’t move for a moment. “Bloody hell, that was close,” he said, rolling away. “Nish, you all right?”

“Y-Yes.” Anisha levered up onto one elbow. “Did it hit?”

“Aye, too bloody close for me,” he said. “I think the downspout carried it off—into that near apple tree, by the sound of it.”

“
Thank
you,” she said.

He cupped her face with one hand, but despite the fright, he could see she had that vague look in her eyes; the one he so often saw in Ruthveyn when his defenses were down and fatigue had begun to wear away his control. A part of her was still in the heavens, pondering what was to come. It was nothing to do with the Gift—not as Rance knew it. It was the mystic in them; that part of their mother they so rarely gave words to.

He rolled onto his feet, still shaken, and helped her from the floor. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No, no,” she said. “But I had my hand on the leaded window, didn’t I? The metal—how foolish!—but I was thinking of Mamma. Of what she might advise, were she here.”

Rance was still shaken. The strike had been far too close for his comfort. He did not say so but instead lightly kissed her nose, then drew her back to the settle. Anisha, however, did not sit.

Instead she began to pace back and forth by the table.

“Here is the thing, Rance, my mother would advise,” she finally said. “If you truly think you have wronged Percy, then you have. The heart knows the mind’s will, no matter how subtle, or almost unintentional, it may be. And so you must begin to seek
dharma
. You must negate your bad deeds with good ones.”

She was speaking, he thought, of something specific. He followed her to the hearth. “I can try,” he answered. “Go on.”

She stopped and set one hand on the mantel. “I think you must avenge his death to make this right,” she said. “You must find the man who killed him—not just for yourself but for everyone whose life this evil has touched. But you must seek
justice
. Not a blood vengeance.”

He looked at her incredulously. “So I should . . . what, Nish?” he asked. “Resist the urge to throttle the fellow and instead haul him off to the magistrate for a fair trial? That’s a damned sight more than I ever got.”

“But that’s what
dharma
is, you see,” she said. “The path of righteous living is not the easy path, or even the path according to some moldering religious tome. It is the path according to the universal laws—sometimes even the laws of man—the things that bring happiness and peace to the mortal world.”

He reached out and slicked a hand down her hair. “Nish,” he said quietly, “I have lived so hard for so long, I wouldn’t know a righteous path if it jumped up and bit me in the arse.”

“Yes. You would.” With a muted smile, Anisha set her cheek to his shoulder and set a hand over his heart. “You would know it here. You are going to learn something important when you go to Brighton. That is the first leg of your path.”

He laughed. “Packing me off to Brighton, are you?”

“We both know you’ve been planning to go ever since we left Mr. Kemble.” But there was no accusation in her voice. “And now fate is with you. When you go, you will find this man, this Mr. Hedge. You will learn the truth, or something near it. And then you will do the honorable thing. I am sure of it.”

“You’ve an awful lot of faith in me,” he said hesitantly.

She lifted her head, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed him. Her eyes were more somnolent than distant now, and she seemed to have come entirely back to herself.

“I do have faith,” she said quietly. “You will go, and you will do the right thing.” Then she pulled a little away from him, her gaze softening almost seductively. “But you did, as I recall, claim that tonight you were going to do the
wrong
thing. I hope you don’t mean to renege on that promise?”

He laughed, remembering his words to her. Though little more than an hour had passed, the moment seemed a lifetime ago. But suddenly—with Anisha’s warmth pressed so sweetly against him and his heart perhaps a little unburdened—it didn’t seem nearly as wrong. It made, in fact, a disconcerting amount of sense.

He managed to grin down at her. “Aye, well, enough of this redemption business,” he said. “A sinner I might be, but ne’er a liar.”

With little effort, he scooped Anisha up again, just as he had lifted her from the carriage, this time to carry her around the table. She laughed and threw her hands round his neck.

The door to her tiny bedchamber was half open to allow the fire’s warmth to permeate. A lamp burned low by the bed, which was already turned back. Elbowing his way through, Rance perched her on the edge of the impossibly high mattress. For a moment, Anisha’s earnest brown eyes held his, and she looked, he thought, as happy as ever he’d seen her.

And he had done that.

He, somehow, had put that light in her eyes.

So he’d bloody well manage to keep it there. Kissing the tip of her nose, he stepped back a pace. “Well, Nish, here’s to doing the wrong thing,” he said, turning his shirt inside out as he dragged it over his head.

She made a faint sound of appreciation, her eyes warming in the lamplight as they drifted down him; all the way down to the drawers which now hung loosely off his hips, and just a little lower still, for his hardening cock was unmistakable now.

“Do you not begin to wonder, Rance,” she murmured, her gaze focused there, “if doing the right thing isn’t vastly overrated?”

He gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Aye, well, just remember, love—if one day old Ruthveyn yanks that wicked jezail of his off his wall and shoots me dead for it, the
wrong thing
was still worth it to me.”

But Anisha’s gaze did not rise. “Seriously, you are
magnificent,
” she said huskily. “I remember wondering all those many months ago . . . well, let us just say,
meri jaan,
that nothing about you falls short of a lady’s fantasies. And you are beautiful in the bargain.”

He tossed the shirt aside, certain her eyes were clouded by something—just feminine lust, perhaps. As a lad, yes, he had been handsome. When he’d first come down to London at scarcely eighteen, alone and looking for mischief,
it
had found
him
—and in myriad forms. At first the ladies of the
ton
had simply winked at one another behind their fans. But eventually, more than one had brazenly tipped a finger beneath his chin and called him
pretty
in a voice that had been pure invitation.

And Rance had said
yes
. To a lot of them.

But he was no longer a pretty boy. Now he was just a hard man with a bad name who had lived an ugly life and been scarred by it, inside and out, then boiled down, he often thought, to the pure essence of what a man was: sinew and bone. Muscle and grim determination. There was nothing more to him than that.

But it was what Anisha wanted, it seemed. She scooted back off the bed, her eyes glowing with a warmth even the most practiced of courtesans could not have feigned. And when she crooked her finger, the last little scrap of what might have been a good intention vanished.

He stepped close, and her small, clever fingers went at once to the tie of his drawers, tugging free the knot. In an instant, they breezed down his legs to pool on the old planks. Then, catching her hand, he drew her up and unfastened the gold-embroidered ties of her peignoir. Sliding his hands over her slender shoulders, he pushed it off. It slithered down her back to join his shirt and drawers on the floor.

Rance kissed her again, hot and hard, fisting up her nightgown as he thrust and circled her tongue. He broke the kiss just long enough to drag the green silk over her head. At the sight and scent of her, his cock stirred, brushing the soft flesh of her belly.

He set her a little away and tried to drink his fill as she stood a little shyly before him. But he knew it would never be so; that with Anisha, he would never be sated. In the last hellish year, his had become a well of need that flowed over all boundaries, eternally replenishing.

Good God, she was so small and perfect—like a little jewel, exquisite in her dark beauty. His eyes drifted down over her face, past her small, round breasts, catching on the sweet flare of her hip bones and the soft place his cock had just teased. Unable to stop himself, Rance let his hand slide down to cover her there, his broad fingers splaying over her womb, and thought of the miracles that had been.

Of the miracles that could still be.

More than anything on earth,
Anisha had told Teddy,
she yearned for more children.

The thought sent a wave of protectiveness and desire surging. And the guilt that usually followed his desire for her was . . . well, still there.

But the desire and the dream had muted it; the yearning he felt for her was beginning to set free inside him a rush of possibilities—the sense that certain things were meant to be, and that it fell to him to make them happen. To endure whatever had to be endured, and to make certain she suffered no regret.

He drew her to him and held her there, burying his face against her neck. “I love you, Nish,” he whispered. “I have always loved you. Tell me you know that.”

“I know,” she said simply. “I have just been waiting for
you
to know.”

He gave a harsh laugh and pressed his lips to the warm pulse point beneath her ear. “I have always known,” he said. “Almost from the moment I saw you on that ship, so small and lost and yet so full of courage—”