The Indian Maiden (22 page)

The gentleman on the settee did not look up from his endeavors at this, for he had gone too far to hear her, but his partner, who was, after all, only paid to participate, glanced up from her charade of
ecstasy
at the words. The masked lady and her escort were diverted enough to stare at Faith curiously as well. At that, the earl gripped her arm hard and dragged her away from their notice.

“Are you mad?” he demanded.

She made no answer, but did not cease trembling, and he saw even in that strange gilded light that her eyes were wide and frantic and that what he could see of her face was as white as death. He murmured something angrily beneath his breath and, still holding Faith by the arm, quickly made his way to the door again.

It was his sudden stab of terrible self-doubt, as strong as it was rare, that made him relax his hold on her as the footman opened the door for their exit. It was the concern at what had chased him from her premises so soon after he’d arrived that caused the proprietress of the establishment to rush after him. It was the fact that she was no match for his long legs that caused her to signal for her doorman to intercept him on the outer stairs just as he motioned for his carriage once again. And it was his attempt to assure them both that nothing was amiss, so that they would not study his companion too closely, that made him loose his hold on Faith completely so that he could push her toward the open door of his coach.

So it was when he had done with reassuring the pair as to their establishment’s excellence and his own health’s untimely failure, and had turned back to join Faith in the carriage, that as he bent double to step inside he was arrested in mid-motion when he saw that she was not there. And then he stepped out again and spun around to stare about wildly and discover that she was entirely gone from his sight.

The only sound within the room was the deep steady pulse of the clock on the mantel. It was too warm an evening to lay a fire and so there was no glow and sputter and crackle of flame to enliven the atmosphere either. The only motion in the room was that of the thin brown liquid swirled about as the gentleman turned his wrist and contemplated the depths of the goblet he held. Other than that, even he, clad in a dressing gown and sunk in the depths of a club chair, stayed as still and silent as any picture on the wall in the dimly lit room. And the only diversion the gentleman had was the thought that he’d never need hire a rat-catcher to inspect his townhouse. For if he’d had so much as mouse in the place, he thought, its steps would have rung out like hoofbeats had it ventured one paw’s worth across the floor.

He didn’t know, he sighed, why he expected more. It was late, his house guest was already abed, filled with so much of the liquid his host was now inspecting in his glass to ensure his rest that it was doubtful he could have opened one eye if a horse had indeed galloped across his bedchamber. The servants had retired for the evening, and it being a bachelor establishment there were few female servitors, and those few all nearly as old as the male retainers, so there wasn’t even a hint of a giggle, scurry, or tip-toe issuing from their quarters either. No, Barnabas Stratton thought, staring dully at his glass, the only one awake in the entire establishment was the gent who owned the place, and he, poor wretch, sat up watching over it as sleepless as a night watchman with a bad tooth.

“But when he got there, the cupboard was bare, and so the poor lord had none,” the lone gentleman whispered to himself on a scowl, and drained off the rest of the liquid in his glass rapidly in a morose toast, deciding belatedly that he really didn’t care for the stuff at all.

But none of it was his fault, he argued with himself. He’d started the night with high hopes. He and Will Rossiter had gone to the Cumberland Gardens and strolled about for a fruitless hour netting just what they might on any night there, which was only greetings from several acquaintances and invitations from several strange young females who wished to make their more intimate acquaintances. They’d gone at last to make inquiries in the coach line, and discovered that the duchess’s carriage was not in wait there, nor was there any hired hack engaged by the earl. It was only as they rode toward Vauxhall Gardens, thinking their informant might have gotten the letter of their destination wrong but the spirit of it right, that they saw the duchess’s carriage in a line in front of the Swansons’ townhouse. And while the duchess might have at the eleventh hour opted to go to one of the Swansons’ musical evenings, Bar
na
bas had told his young guest firmly he did not think he’d led a wicked enough life as yet to deserve having to attend another one this side of Judgment Day.

They’d dined alone, and Will had been so despondent, and had done such an excellent imitation of a sponge, both conversationally and literally, that after Barnabas congratulated him on the imposture, he’d also promised him that they’d call on Lady Mary and her guest the very next morning. But now, Will was likely deep in woozy but happy dreams of that forthcoming meeting, and his host was wide awake to the problems the poor lad faced all unknowing, as well as to the problem he himself faced, that he had only begun to know.

It was a lonely night that capped an empty week, and the gentleman arose to refill his cup at least, when he at last heard a small noise that nevertheless intruded and pierced the bland silence. He froze at once. His senses suddenly changed from mossy introspection to preparation for combat. He waited for the next telling sound to identify the source, and had a moment to regret he was not a more conventional fellow as he pictured a chase that might erupt from this room to spill out into the street, as it once had done when he’d discovered a cracksman entering his library through a window. He was not best thrilled with the fact that as usual, he wore nothing beneath his dressing gown, wincing as he pictured what a glorious sight he’d make running the miscreant down St. James Street. He sighed; it was only another reason he’d have to hope there was only one intruder and that that one could be rendered unconscious with only a few blows.

He was not so surprised at the invasion of his solitude as he was at where the sound was emanating from, as he lowered the light and stole closer to the front door. This was, after all, London, and large cities bred thieves as frequently as they produced bad vapors, and there was little way to filter either evil phenomenon out of the best areas or the worst ones. A good thief could evade the watch like a night-born shadow, but why a good thief would be trying the front door at this empty hour was more than he could imagine. There was a gaslight directly in front, and never half so many shadowy niches as either the back entrance or that tempting library window offered. He waited with a grim smile, for whatever the fellow’s reckonings, his final accounting would be the same.

So when Lord Deal, secreted in the darkness of his entry hall, at last heard his door knocker openly, blatantly, and thunderously sounded, he almost dropped the pistol he’d collected from his desk in his startled confusion as the din at the door reverberated throughout his sleeping house. But he was a resilient gentleman, so it took only two more sharp knocks before he flung open the door wide and confronted his nocturnal visitor. And then, he let out all his indrawn breath in exasperation, for it was lowering to discover the imagined assassin or burglar was only a midnight reveler, disheveled, likely tipsy, and obviously strayed from some riotous celebration. And a woman, at that.

“My dear lady,” he said in annoyance, “your comrades are not within. Try your luck elsewhere.”

He was already beginning to close the door in her masked face, when he realized she stood unnaturally silent. The vague troublesome thought that she might not be merely a drunken reveler, but some lost young woman come to the sort of harm that can commonly befall a female who travels the nighttime city streets alone, by choice or chance, caused him to hesitate.

It was then that she said, in weary despair and unmistakeable accents, “Oh Lord Deal, please, please get me Will.”

And before his heart stopped beating altogether, he caught her up in his arms and bore her, unresisting, inside his door.

He’d gotten her to the library and the chair he’d so recently vacated, and was lowering her gently into it when he heard Mr. Fielding, his butler, ask in quavering but game fashion, “My lord? Do you need assistance? Shall I call the watch? I’ve young Tredlow here,” the butler went on with rising courage and authority as a few more bare running feet could be heard pounding down the hall, “and Wemberly as well now, do you require our assistance with
...
ah
...
anything?”

This last was said with a bit less certainty, since even at a distance and in the light of the one wavering candle he bore, the butler could see that his master was bending over a
recumbent
female. No more than that could be ascertained, since Lord Deal’s own large form bent over the chair obscured most of the sight, and as one of the taller and more enterprising young footmen later remarked in chagrin, the mort was wearing a mask as well. Lord Deal was usually the most circumspect gentleman, but as Mr. Fielding was later to comment ruefully to the housekeeper, he was, withall, a young gentleman still. And though it was his usual practice to take his entertainment in more discreet fashion, there was never any doubt, his valet often confided importantly, from the sort of scent, powder, and paint that sometimes clung to his evening wear, that he took it. This time, the butler sighed, in the manner of one whose life’s work was to be put upon, he obviously was taking it home. For after a pause, his master’s abstracted voice came back clear and curt, “No, Fielding. Thank you all anyway. Everything is under control now. Good night.”

It was a dismissal, and a dismissal was an order, so Mr. Fielding swept all in front of him, from envious footmen to curious kitchen help, back to their beds, if not their slumbers. He himself only paused a few more moments, to be sure that his master’s guest, Mr. Rossiter, still slept soundly, and to ascertain with a bit more gratification that Mr. Hodges, my lord’s valet, had also slept through the entire disturbance. Then the butler went off to his own room, with a dollop of importance to sweeten his sleep, secure in the knowledge that the morrow would see him king of the servants’ breakfast table.

When the house had returned to its stillness, after Lord Deal had closed the door to the library and poured Faith a cordial and seen her drink it down, he at last moved to do more than wait for her to speak. For it did not seem as though she would ever speak again. She sat quite still and seemed to be in shock. He bent slowly, and carefully untied the mask and drew it away from her face. Then he saw the tearstains, then he saw the complete exhaustion and deep sorrow plain in her lovely, drawn, and white face. Then, at last, his own composure broke and he turned away for a moment so that she would not see his own face, or hear his jagged sigh.

After that lapse, he turned his attention to her again, and his dark tanned hands knotted into white knuckled fists as he asked in a tight voice, “Faith, only tell me who it was. If you know. If not, tell me where it occurred, and I will discover all. He shall not go unpunished. I’ll call a doctor as well,” he went on, trying to keep his voice even, “and we’ll keep it close, Will and
I
. Only please, trust me and tell me.”

“But,” Faith said, as she closed her eyes as if to deny him, “I wanted to see Will. I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Bother?” he said desperately. “Don’t you count me as your friend as well? This changes nothing, I swear it. I only regret it with all my heart, and,” he vowed, finally enclosing her small cold hands in one of his, though he longed to catch her up in his arms and rock her like a child and weep with her for the indignity and despair of it, “I want to help you through it. So tell me, who has done this thing? Or,” he asked, as he started at his own thought, and understood for the first time what precisely the expression signified when someone said that their blood ran cold, “who were they who did this thing to you?”

But then she opened her eyes and at last looked beyond herself and directly at him. Something in his face, or in his troubled eyes, or in his voice, had woken her from her self-absorption at last.

“Tell you what?” she asked.

He drew a deep breath and said as unemotionally as he was able, so as not to distress her more, “Faith, I must know only because for my own sake I must make reprisal on your behalf. Or if not for that, then so that other young women will not be made to suffer as you have done. Plainly then, who was it who attacked you?”

At that she sat up and stared at him in lively terror, the little color remaining in her cheeks draining away.

“Oh lord,” she gasped, “not that. Never that,” she swore, as he in turn looked ill at her distress. “I mean,” she said, her gray eyes luminous and wide, “no one. I haven’t been attacked. I was abducted,” she said angrily, “and humiliated as well, but not physically, and I did escape. But I wasn’t attacked, not in the way that you mean, oh no,” she said, looking very frightened now, where, he suddenly realized, she had only looked worn and wretched before. That, and the petulance that he had definitely heard creep into her voice when she’d said “abducted,” convinced him as no disclaimer she could have spoken would have done.

It was a night of revelations for him. He was so relieved and yet so angry with her at the same moment that he suddenly understood now, decades after the fact, just why after he’d gotten himself lost on a shopping expedition when he was five, his governess had exclaimed that she didn’t know whether to kill him or hug him first when she found him strolling homeward, unharmed and whistling to himself.

And since he liked indecision no more than any other man, and having been prepared for tragedy had instead found himself playing the fool, he tossed the leftover unnecessary tact and delicacy of feeling to the winds and glowered at his surprising guest. He rose to his feet, forgetting that they were bare, and planting his long legs apart, crossed his arms and in his bright robes, unintentionally resembling a fierce medieval warrior, he glowered down at her where she huddled in the chair he’d just so tenderly deposited her in.

“Just what in God’s name are you doing here at this ungodly hour then?” he demanded.

“I thought,” she said in a small voice, “that Will could help me, I think. I didn’t know where else to go,” she whispered even lower, as her eyes began to fill with tears for the first time since all her adventures began this evening, “and well, oh I don’t know, it just seemed the only place to go. I was so confused and unhappy and I just found myself heading for here, since I knew Will was here, and you and
...”
But she didn’t finish saying what naturally came next, for she couldn’t bear to admit her unthinking, unhesitant reliance on someone who now looked as though he wished to murder her and cast her lifeless from his house.

“And you were right,” he said, shaking his tousled head, even as her first tear doused his white-hot rage and tempered it to cool, keen reason, “this is exactly where you should have come.

“Exactly where you belong,” he whispered as she at last came into his open arms with a sob, as he gently pulled her there. He held her close then, and comforted her, and only that—no matter what his butler thought as he sniffed and turned on his side in his bed, and imagined his employer doing with the young female in the library, and envied him heartily all the long way down to sleep for, as well.