The Duke of Shadows (5 page)

He smiled. "Ah, yes. I suppose I
am
the prophet of doom for this Troy."

Against her will, her eyes moved over his face, the strong, chiseled lines of bone and flesh, translating them to an imaginary page in vivid hues of black and gold and green. If only he could pose for her. "Why did you come tonight, then?"

He drew her toward him, and for no reason she could fathom, she let him. His other hand came to her waist, fingertips light as a ghost's as he turned her in the beginning steps of a waltz. "I like to dance?" he ventured, one brow rising as she let herself be guided a few paces down the hallway.

She laughed at the ludicrous answer, at the spectacle of him dancing her down a deserted corridor. His eyes sparkled in return. "Don't you?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, and gasped as he pulled her faster, in keeping with the music floating up the stairs. His movements were seamless, and she closed her eyes, feeling his hands firm around her. She didn't need to count, didn't need to concentrate; she was flying, and if she stumbled, his hands would be there, strong enough to catch her— She opened them again as he came to a slow stop at the end of the hall. His expression was solemn. "Feeling better?"

Her throat thickened. Perhaps it was his kindness that undid her. He owed her nothing, or less than nothing, really: she was a woman whose future husband showed him only contempt. "Yes. Thank you."

"No thanks necessary." He gave her a strange smile. "You know, you must really pity them, the Cassandras." His hand came up to cup her face, his thumb stroking across her cheekbone. Her heart skipped a beat. "By nature, they are distracted."

"Are they?" Her thoughts were scattering under his touch. "Yes, of course they are. How frustrating it must be for you."

"All doom and gloom, Miss Martin. No time whatsoever to pursue pleasanter ideas."

The gentle mockery in his tone puzzled her. "I think I am missing the joke."

His soft laughter raised goose bumps along her arms. He shook his head, as if chiding her for refusing to laugh with him. "You
are
the joke, dear heart."

Stung, she moved to pull away—and his arm around her waist tightened.

She saw the kiss coming. She could have pulled away. She did not.

Her eyes closed as his lips brushed hers. Warm, soft. He tasted like mint, and fennel and cardamom. She stepped into him, her skirts belling out behind her; he was tall, his back broad, and her hands slid up it to his shoulders. It would be lovely to be so strong, to be unafraid of what the world might throw in one's path. His mouth gently shaped her lower lip, and then began to withdraw; her fingers dug a protest into his skin, calling him back. The kiss resumed, firmer now. She opened her mouth to breathe, and his tongue touched hers, startling a small sound from her.

Laughter and talk somewhere nearby jolted them apart. Their eyes met. His breath was coming fast. She could not decipher his expression. Certainly he did not seem to share her surprise. If anything, there was a grim cast to his features, as if he had just realized something unpleasant.

"I must go," she said. She did not know who she was, with him. It was a different sort of strangeness than she felt with Marcus. With Marcus, there was a pattern—a tiresome, predictable pattern. But if she stayed here in this hallway with Lord Holdensmoor, she did not know what she would do. "Back, I mean. Downstairs."

"Yes," he said, and drew a visible breath. Then stillness fell over him. In an instant, he went from disheveled to completely self-contained. It was a neat trick, and she envied him for it. The knowledge that his eyes were on her made her legs tremble all the way down the hall.

"Ah. From Calcutta, I suppose? Or Bombay."

She straightened from peeking under the tablecloth. There were lamps set on the floor—she had almost kicked one over!

"For the mosquitoes," Mr. Cooper said. "Draws 'em away."

"Oh, really? How ingenious." She tucked her feet safely beneath her chair and reached for her wineglass. She was tempted to drink it straight down. The Marquess was seated three chairs away, and she could not look at him. Could not think of him without flushing. "Yes," she said, when Mm. Cooper prompted hem. "Bombay is where I landed. It's very different from Delhi, isn't it? So many more Englishmen. And the weather is milder."

Mr. Cooper made a glum noise. "Of course you'd say that," he said, staring into his own glass. "But when the monsoons start up in a week or two, it will be wretched. I was positioned theme for a while, but thank God! They transferred me." His shudder seemed a touch overdone. "Water up to your waist, I tell you. Ungodly climate."

"Mmm." Marcus had turned to cast her a narrow-eyed glance. Checking up on her. She was tempted to make a face at him.

"They're even odder there, the natives." Mr. Cooper considered his claret against the light—a shockingly rude thing to do—and then drained the glass to the dregs. "Worship some confounded elephant god, with a human body and the head of a beast. Heathens they may be, but they've got the devil of an imagination."

She stained at him. "An elephant-man? But why?"

He shrugged and turned back to his plate. "Can't say as I ever asked. Don't want to humor their ungodly ways. Say, you ever seen the pictures of those god-dess-ses?" He pronounced each syllable distinctly, as though the very word were nonsensical. "Bare-chested, with six or seven arms coming out of their backs." He guffawed at the idea. "Imagine one of
them
in your bed!"

"Mr. Cooper!" she gasped.

"Ignore him," the Marquess said from down the table. He smiled as he spoke his next words. "You're very drunk, aren't you, Cooper?"

Emma choked on her wine. "Sauced," Mr. Cooper agreed, and toasted Lord Holdensmoor with a forkful of pheasant.

With great care, she set down her glass. This was not an exchange for which Mrs. Clements' volume on Anglo-Indian etiquette had prepared her.

The Marquess met her eyes, and his smile widened. Fair enough; no doubt she was a comical sight, with her eyes as round as moons—and now her cheeks red to boot. "We try to create a miniature England here, Miss Martin, but no one claims to have succeeded."

"Indeed," she said faintly.

He smiled again, then turned back to the ravishing brunette at his side. She, however, was staring at Emma, with a nasty little smirk on her lips. Emma glanced at her, glanced away, and then looked back, raising her brows in civil inquiry.

"Miss Martin?" the woman repeated, pursing her white brow. "You're the famous fiancée, then."

Emma hesitated. She felt as though she'd fallen through a mirror into some strange parallel world where good manners were the very inverse of those in the place she'd left. "Famous, Miss…?"

As Miss Crowley gave this little speech, silence spread through the people around them. It contrasted markedly with the other end of the table, where the conversation continued as boisterously as ever.

Another one of Marcus's histories taking her unawares, then—and, judging by the reactions, a sordid one to boot. What did the woman expect her to do? Swoon? "How lovely to hear that you are friends," Emma said. "It does seem that he is blessed with a great
many
friends in Delhi." Without another word, she turned back to Mr. Cooper.

Her dinner partner was staring morosely at his plate, which was very nearly empty. She ran an eye over him. "Are you quite all right, sir?"

From Miss Crowley's other side, a pallid, poetic-looking gentleman spoke up. "Cooper old boy, it's a party! No call to look so gloomy!"

"I'm thinking of the accounts, Hawthorne," Mr. Cooper muttered. "If we have to buy new cartridges, I don't know how we'll manage it next year."

"Stuff and nonsense," Mr. Hawthorne said. "We'll just break them of this superstitious nonsense. A man can't be a soldier if he's afraid of a little pig grease."

Miss Crowley tittered. "How impressive, Mr. Hawthorne. You plan to convert the whole of the Indian militia to Christianity in the next seven months?"

They were speaking of the Meerut incident, Emma realized. In April, more than one hundred soldiers had refused to load their guns after realizing the act would involve biting bullets rumored to be greased with cow and pig fat—a problematic task, seeing that Hindus were forbidden to touch beef and Mussulmans could not eat pork. Emma cleared her throat. "Why don't you just grease the bullets with something else?"

Mr. Cooper's whole body jerked. "Good God, woman!" Bits of wine rained across her bodice as he spoke. "Do you know how much money that would cost?"

The Marquess spoke up. "Indeed. Have some sense, Miss Martin. Far cheaper to have the whole army refuse to fight."

"Balderdash," Hawthorne said. "They wouldn't dare. They know who their masters are."

"Quite right." The Marquess's voice was dry as dust. "They have a very good grasp of whom to shoot. Mangal Pandey, if you recall, missed Sergeant Hewson by inches."

"And I expect you cried into your pillow over that," Hawthorne muttered.

Mr. Cooper harrumphed in disapproval. The Marquess's eyes bored into Hawthorne; after a moment, the man colored and shifted in his seat.

"I don't understand," Emma said. "You are simply assuming that they will learn to accept the cartridges?"

Silence was her reply.

She could not help but glance at the Marquess. His eyes were already on her, and the realization made her stomach dip—a queer but not unpleasant sensation. She arched her brows, and he turned his palms up in an expression that said,
You see? They will not listen.

"Well, gentlemen?" he said to the table at large. "Can no one muster a platitude to soothe our brave memsahibs?"

"I need no soothing," Miss Crowley said. "I have full faith in our army, and I sleep soundly, I assure you."

"And why not?" Emma added. "Until, of course, these soldiers overcome their scruples and decide to use the bullets on the people who would force them to commit sacrilege. Which appears, Miss Crowley, to be
us."

She stared at him. "Do I what?"

"I don't mean those silly Waverley books; you didn't get your learning there. My, but it's so rare to encounter an educated woman. I'm not sure I like it."

"Hawthorne." The Marquess's tone was soft and sharp. But Emma beat him to it.

"I'm not sure I like
you,"
she snapped.

A bruising vice clamped around her shoulder. She glanced up to find Marcus standing over her, his jaw hard as stone. "If I may have a word with you," he said.

"Of course." She came to her feet, and the men rose too, making her feel all the more conspicuous. Her eyes touched the Marquess's as she withdrew, and she looked quickly away from his frown.

Marcus shut the pocket doors to the dining room with extreme care, then wheeled so abruptly that she stumbled back. He glared at her for a moment, then snatched her wrist, dragging her down the corridor and into a sitting room.

This door he did not shut so quietly; she flinched again as it cracked against the wooden frame.

In three long strides, he was before her, his breath harsh and rapid, his face mottled with color.
"What
do you think you're doing?"

Emma stepped backward, out of his grip, and her skirts collided with a settee. Pushing down her crinolines and straightening her spine, she lowered herself into the seat. "The man asked me if I knew how to read, Marcus. It was utterly insulting."

"You're a
woman,
Emmaline!"

"And?"

Save the furious working of his jaw, he was absolutely still as he stared at her. Then he exhaled sharply, clenching his hands behind his back in proper military fashion. "My father always said your father was a damned fool for educating you."

Emma gasped. "How dare he! My father would never have dreamed of maligning yours!"

"Your father was an addled old bat. He wouldn't have known a rock if it had hit him."

Emma lunged off the sofa. "My father was a wise, caring man! He—"

"He raised a daughter who isn't fit for company!"

"He taught me more than
you'll
ever know! I can read three languages, I can paint, I can—"

"Do everything except the
only
things a woman is good for: looking pretty and keeping her mouth shut."

"You pig," Emma breathed. "What has happened to you here? You were never like this before."

"Indeed? Perhaps I was not aware that my intended had worse manners than a workhouse orphan!"

"You
agreed to this marriage!" She was shaking now, she was so angry. "And, unlike me, you were old enough to know what it meant.
You
were the one—"

"Little did I imagine you were going to turn out like this!" He pivoted, pacing the carpet in a tight circle around her. "Do you know how ashamed I was to hear you at the table? Challenging the assistant treasurer about his knowledge of the natives? You know nothing of these things, Emmaline! Nothing!"

She narrowed her eyes. "I know that none of you are even
considering
the possibility that the natives might mutiny! How irresponsible is that, Marcus? So many civilians depend on your clear thinking—"

"There you go again! How do you know we haven't considered the possibility? How dare you presume to know—"

"I know you're not even listening to Lord Holdensmoor!"

Silence fell like a funeral pall. She bit her lip.

"When have you been talking to the Marquess?" His voice, like his face, was without expression.

Emma drew a long breath. "Well, he visited the Residency yesterday."

"He visited you?"