The Passion of the Purple Plumeria (13 page)

“She’s lying,” Gwen agreed, wringing out the cloth in the basin. “But it was a noble lie. She has character, that girl.”

“She’s not a girl anymore,” said William. She had been a girl when he put her on the boat in Calcutta, a girl of seventeen. She was twenty-seven, and deserved better than he’d given her.

“Whatever she is,” said Gwen, “she’s strong. You should be proud of her.”

He would have been more proud if he’d kept her closer, safer. And then there was Lizzy, missing.

“When do we leave?” he asked.

Gwen eyed him assessingly. “Your fever only broke this morning.”

“When do we leave?” he repeated.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re as stubborn as a mule?”

In fact, they hadn’t. He usually got his way with charm rather than brute force. But he didn’t have the energy to be charming. And he didn’t think she’d fall for it, anyway.

“It takes one to know one,” he said instead.

Gwen grinned at him. “As long as we understand each other,” she said. “You’re not going anywhere tonight—no, don’t argue with me! We’ll never make the stage and I’m not letting you near the reins of a curricle like that. You’d overturn us both, and then where would your daughters be?”

He had to acknowledge the logic of that, but he didn’t like it. “I don’t like it,” he grumbled.

“And I don’t like tripe,” she said. “We all have to deal with things we don’t like in this world.”

Tripe? How did tripe get into it? “They’re hardly on the same order.”

“Distracted you, though, didn’t I?” Sobering, she said, “Think it through. The girls have been missing for nearly three weeks now. One night will hardly make a difference.”

William folded his arms across his chest, ignoring the pinch in his side. “You’re not making me feel any better.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” she said. “But I would prefer to keep you alive. I’ve invested too much effort to see you collapsing somewhere between Bristol and Bath.”

She said it matter-of-factly, but there was something in her voice that hadn’t been there before. For the first time, he noticed that there were purple circles under her eyes to match the color of her dress. Her face seemed thinner than before, thinner and more drawn. She had pulled her hair back ruthlessly from her face, but the severe hairstyle only emphasized the hollows below her cheeks, the fragility of her long neck.

William reached out and caught her hand before she could turn away. “Have you had any sleep these past four nights?”

She twitched her hand away. “Some,” she said. “Enough.” But she didn’t quite meet his eyes.

William’s memories of the last few days might be fragmented, but what he did remember was Gwen leaning over him, tending him, feeding him, her hands as gentle as her tone was rough. “I’d rather you not kill yourself in tending me.”

She put her nose in the air. “I’m not such a weakling as that.”

“No,” he said, the first smile in days beginning to curl across his lips. “You’re not. Has anyone ever told you you’re a dab hand with a sword?”

She made an airy gesture with one hand. She wore several rings, heavy things in twisted gold and enamel, but not a wedding ring among them. “I had a reasonably competent fencing master.”

“Is it the thing in England for ladies to have fencing masters?”

She shrugged, avoiding his eyes. “I get easily bored. And, as you see, my little toy can be rather useful. The roads aren’t as lawless as they were twenty years past, but one still encounters the odd highwayman with delusions of competence.”

“Delusions of competence,” William repeated. There was no denying that the woman had a way with words.

She mistook his slow headshake as something else. “You mustn’t overtire yourself.” Frowning, she leaned over him, testing his temperature. “The fever seems to be gone, but you’d best rest still. If you make it through the night without it rising, we can take the stage back to Bath tomorrow.”

She stood over his bed like an avenging angel, ready to chivy him to sleep with a flaming sword.

“Only if you get some rest too,” said William stubbornly.

“I shall,” she said, and weak or not, William still knew enough to know when someone was lying. She sat herself down in the chair by the bed with a flounce of her crumpled skirts. “Presently.”

If he believed that, he’d also believe she had a commission to sell him in a regiment of her own making.

William looked around the room. It ought to have been evident to him before, but his mind hadn’t been all that it could be. “There’s only the one bed.”

“Yes,” she said. She absently rubbed her shoulder with one hand. “I am aware of that.”

“You’ve not been sleeping in that chair?” Even as he said it, he remembered waking to find her next to him, curled up in sleep.

Gwen’s cheeks darkened. “I took a little rest now and again on the bed—on top of the covers,” she added hastily. “You were too far gone to notice. Besides, it would have looked odd if anyone had come in and I wasn’t in the bed with you. We’re meant to be married, remember? No, of course you don’t. You were tottering with blood loss. I had to tell the innkeeper that we were married. Don’t worry, it’s not binding.”

There was something rather endearing about her obvious discomfort. “I’m not worried.”

If anything, that seemed to annoy her. “Well, you should be. If it were Scotland, we would be married by now whether we liked it or not. All it takes is a pronouncement in front of strangers for a marriage to be legally binding.”

“I’ll remember that,” William said, “the next time I find myself in Scotland. In the meantime, there’s a broad bed, and room for you in it.”

He patted the covers next to him.

He watched as she surreptitiously flexed her shoulders, eyeing the lumpy mattress like a tiger sighting an unattended goat. With an effort, she straightened her back. “No matter,” she said. “I’ll just read for a bit.”

William hoisted himself onto one elbow. “You said you’d slept here before.”

“Yes,” she said, frowning at him. “But you were asleep. And delusional.”

“I intend to be asleep very shortly,” he said. “And it’s safe to say that I’m still delusional.”

“Not like before,” said Gwen with authority, but she rose, stiffly, from the chair, stretching.

William was reminded of a cat, having scorned a dish of meat, waiting until the humans’ backs were turned before inching towards it.

“That reminds me,” she said brusquely. “Who is Lakshmi?”

Puzzled but game, William said, “She’s the Hindu goddess of fortune.” As Gwen seated herself on the other side of the bed, leaning over to unlace her leather boots, he added, “She’s a bit like the Roman Venus, in that she’s meant to be the embodiment of beauty, but with other aspects beside. Not quite so dim as poor old Venus.”

Lakshmi, goddess of beauty and fortune . . .

He could hear the faint echo of his own voice, fever hoarse. Confused images, brightly colored birds, a fountain, and always, always, that fall of dark hair, brushing his bare arms, caressing his face, as he feasted on her lips, his hands around a lithe waist that slipped away, just out of his grasp.

William shook himself back to the present. “Why do you ask?”

Gwen had tucked her bare feet up under her skirt. She curled up on the far side of the bed, on top of the covers, her shawl spread over her.

“Nothing,” she said quickly, and if his eyes didn’t ache quite so much, William might have thought she had turned slightly pink. “Just something you said in your sleep.”

Their faces were on a level now, pillow to pillow. William eyed her with interest. “Did I say anything else interesting in my sleep?”

“Just those sea shanties,” Gwen shot back. She twitched her shawl, trying to get it to cover more of her. It was a flimsy thing, a lady’s shawl, intended for ornament rather than real use.

“You’re shivering,” said William, sitting bolt upright. The covers fell away from his chest. He yanked at the blanket on top of which she was lying. “Come under the covers.”

Gwen rolled away. “I am quite all right, thank you,” said her muffled voice from the other side of the bed. She still had the blanket trapped beneath her.

William tapped her on the shoulder. “There’s no one here to know. I won’t have you take a fever now, not after all the effort you’ve put in to save my sorry hide.” She stayed curled up just where she was. Cajolingly, he added, “You can put a sword between us, if that would make you feel better.”

That got her attention. She rolled her neck to look over at him. She ought to have been vulnerable in her prone position, but she managed to pack her voice with a full measure of disdain. “I prefer to keep my sword where I can reach it, thank you very much.”

She patted the handle of her parasol, which was propped beside the bed.

“And don’t think that I don’t appreciate that,” said William, “but I’ll not have you freezing, and that’s my final word.”

“
Your
final word— Stop that!”

William gave the covers a sharp yank, enough to unbalance her, trying to pull them out from under her so that he could put them over her. Gwen rolled over to stop him, and somehow, he wasn’t quite sure how, after a bit of scuffling and tussling, and a “mind your bandages, you fool!” she was lying beneath him, her hair tousled from its pins, both of them breathing hard.

They stared at each other for a moment, both slightly dazed.

At least she wasn’t blue anymore. There was flush on her cheeks and her lips were red and slightly parted.

“All right!” she said, squirming away from him. “All right! You win!” She pushed at his chest—making sure to avoid his bandage—with both hands. “Move, you great lug. I can’t get under the covers with you on top of me.”

For some reason, William couldn’t stop grinning, despite the dull ache in his side. He obligingly rolled over, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, hitching up his breeches to preserve his decency. It was the first time he’d been out of bed in days, and his legs felt wobbly, but he’d be damned if he’d let her see it.

With a courtly gesture, he held up the sheets so that she could climb under.

“Can I have that in writing?” he said. “About the winning?”

“We tell no one of this,” Gwen said fiercely, staring him down for all she was worth. “Do you understand? No one.”

“Agreed,” he said, and slid back in on his side of the bed.

Gwen scrunched herself in the smallest possible space at the edge of the bed, pointedly turned her back on him, and yanked the covers up over her shoulders, her hand resting on the handle of her sword parasol.

She’d left the candles burning on the nightstand. One by one, William lifted them and blew them out, plunging the room into darkness.

He waited before the last candle was out before saying, “Gwen?”

She wriggled deeper into her side of the bed, pointedly ignoring him. “I’m not talking to you,” she muttered.

Despite all the worries crowding around him—or perhaps because of them—William smiled.

“Sleep well,” he said. “And may all your dreams be sweet.”

“Hmph,” said Gwen. But he noticed that she didn’t push the covers away.

Plumeria resolved never to tell Sir Magnifico of the liberties he had taken, ever so unwittingly, in the secluded environs of the
olive
oak grove. What happened in the oak grove stayed in the oak grove. Thus she resolved, but as they made their unsteady way towards the dark tower, she could not help but notice a strange change in the formerly voluble knight. Was it the Gypsy’s curse at work? Or some greater, even more mysterious power?

—From
The Convent of Orsino
by A Lady

G
wen was warm, truly warm, for the first time in days.

She hadn’t realized just how exhausted she had been, sleeping in fits and starts, waking to minister to William, waking because she couldn’t stop shivering, until she had grudgingly accepted a place in the bed, under the covers. The clergy could go on all they liked about angels with harps, but as far as she was concerned, heaven was a large bed and a warm blanket.

Then the blanket moved. One might even say it wriggled.

She was, she realized, snuggled up against William Reid, his front pressed against her back, the position of his body mirroring the shape of hers. There was a knee tucked up behind hers and a heavy arm draped over her waist. She could feel a chin bumping up against her shoulder blade and a nose tucked up against the nape of her neck.

Gwen’s first, sleepy thought was that this would be very useful for her book, for the scene where Plumeria and Sir Magnifico fell into an enchanted sleep in the olive grove. Or perhaps an oak grove. Somehow, olives just didn’t spell out romance and enchantment. Yes, Magnifico’s arm around Plumeria’s waist, just so. Only, she wasn’t sure that Magnifico’s arm should be quite so, well, bare.

Her brain went back to that “bare” and stuck there. Bare. Arm. Bare.

Good Lord, she was in bed with a naked man. Not that that was a surprise—she’d known that when she went to bed, seduced by the siren song of warm bedcovers—but he was ill, and on the other side of the bed. His attire or lack thereof had hardly seemed to count. Obviously, that was before some point in the night they had got stuck together like— Her brain lurched at simile and came up short. He was just so . . . unclothed.

She was being embraced by a naked man. Well, a man in breeches. A largely naked man. Not as if the percentage of his nudity made any difference, as if only being half-nude was somehow more respectable than being two-thirds nude. No, the key factor was the embrace. They were tucked up together like peas in a pod, if peas had a habit of tucking their partners around the waist and pulling them back against them.

Deep breaths. There was nothing to panic about. It was purely an accident of sleep. She would just remove herself from his embrace and he would never know she had been there. She’d wager that he embraced any woman in his bed the same way. For all she knew, he might think she was a pillow. Yes, a pillow.

Doing her best to impersonate a pillow, if pillows had the power of independent motion, Gwen began inching out from under William’s arm.

William stirred in his sleep. He mumbled something completely unintelligible. His arm tightened around her waist, clamping her firmly back in place. Then he threw a leg over her for good measure. Her skirts must have got hitched up while she was sleeping. She could feel his bare calf against her leg in the most shockingly intimate way.

Murmuring something in his sleep, William burrowed against her neck, his nose rubbing against the sensitive skin at her nape.

Was he . . .
nuzzling
her? Yes, that was quite definitely a nuzzle. The motion sent little tingles along the back of her neck, straight down her spine. She felt a most unaccountable desire to purr.

Gwen reminded herself that the man behind her knew not what he nuzzled, and with any luck, he wouldn’t remember any of this by the time he woke up. Rather like that kiss the other night, the one where he’d got her confused with some goddess or other.

If one was going to be confused for anyone, it wasn’t at all unpleasant to be mistaken for a major deity. One wouldn’t at all like to be confused for the lesser sort of deity.

But a deity known for beauty and good fortune? That was . . . gratifying. Yes, gratifying. What with the nuzzling, Gwen was having trouble keeping her train of thought straight. She knew she should remove herself, but the bed was so cozy, so warm.

It was a long time since anyone had compared her to anything that didn’t breathe fire and sport sharp claws.

Tim had written poetry to her once. Sonnets, odes, sestinas. She hadn’t been particular about the form. It had been enough that he was writing poetry to her, about her. She had taken it as her due, believing every exaggerated simile, believing that her skin was like pearl, her hair black silk, her eyes daggers in Cupid’s own arsenal. Aphrodite, he had called her, the first time he persuaded her out of her clothes—not that she’d taken all that much persuading.

It was all a sham, of course, like the rest of Tim’s avowals. She was sure he’d presented the exact same verses to the heiress he’d married two months later, changing jetty locks for curls of gold and ebony eyes for azure, or some such rot.

If one thing was constant, it was the inconstancy of the male sex. A man could nuzzle and nuzzle and still be untrue.

With that salutary reminder, Gwen plunked the Colonel’s arm off her waist and neatly extracted herself from his sleepy embrace. It was very cold outside the nest of blankets. Bracing—that was what it was. Bracing. Her neck still tingled from the nuzzling. Gwen ruthlessly rubbed it with the heel of her hand, scrubbing the memory away. She flung herself down on the chair by the bed, yanking on her stockings, then her half boots, all the armor of her daily garb.

There were mumblings and rustlings from the bed. The Colonel burrowed deeper into the pillow, one brown arm flung over his head, before emerging, tousled and sleepy. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes heavy with sleep, his hair any which way.

“Good morning,” he said, smiling at her.

If this had been another set of circumstances, she might have smoothed the tousled hair from his brow. She might have leaned forwards and pressed her lips against that smile, might have let herself be lured back into the sleep-warmed nest of the sheets.

But that was all a world ago. The girl who might have done such things was gone, long ago.

Gwen hardened her heart and applied herself to lacing up her boots. “Is it?” she said disagreeably. “It looks like rain.”

“Bother the rain,” said the Colonel expansively. “I feel like I could conquer the world.”

He stretched his arms out over his head, sending the sheets tumbling down to his waist, revealing the broad expanse of his chest, grizzled with red-white hair and seamed with old scars.

He winced as the movement made his stitches pull. “Or at least a very small province.”

“Try getting out of bed first,” said Gwen tartly, but she held out a hand to help him.

To her surprise, he took it, his large, calloused hand closing tightly around hers. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. His breeches dipped before he caught them with his other hand. He wobbled a bit, his legs unused to the job of holding him, and Gwen quickly moved to brace him, one hand against the side of his chest, the side without the bandages. His skin was warm beneath her fingers, not fever hot, but the normal temperature of a healthy male. She could feel his chest rise and fall with his breathing.

“It’s all right,” he said, half laughing, his breath ruffling her hair. For a moment, he rested his cheek on the top of her head. “I shan’t topple over on you.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” she said, but she stepped back anyway, near enough to catch him if he fell. “I don’t want you bashing your head and keeping us here another five days.”

His lips quirked. “You’ve a gallant soul, Gwen Meadows.”

She knew it was absurd, but she’d liked it better when he was comparing her to Indian goddesses. Of course, he hadn’t known that she was she, which was entirely beside the point, if she had any idea what the point was meant to be.

“Gallant is as gallant does,” she said in her best chaperone voice, as starched as a dandy’s collar and as sharp as the point of her sword parasol. “Let’s find you some clothing, shall we?”

He looked down, seeming to realize his nakedness for the first time. He smiled sheepishly at her. “Er, might you have any idea as to the location of the rest of my clothes? I appear to have lost them while I was sleeping.”

She shouldn’t be blushing, really she shouldn’t. They were pretend married, after all. And she was a spinster and beyond such things. No matter that those arguments were mutually contradictory. A little bit of illogic in the service of a good cause had never bothered her before.

“I had to cut your shirt off you,” she said. She busied herself searching through a pile of clothes on the chair, coming up with a plain cambric shirt. “I’ve bought a replacement from the landlord. I’m afraid it’s not very elegant, but it will have to do.”

“So long as it covers me, I’m not particular.”

“Yes, I can tell,” said Gwen, holding up his jacket by two fingers.

William wasn’t offended. “I’m not used to being out of a uniform,” he said. “I’ve no idea what the fashions are.”

She held out the shirt to him, helping him to guide it over his head. “You won’t get far among society, then.”

“I’ve no interest in society.” His voice was muffled by the fabric. His rumpled head emerged through the neck hole. “I just mean to collect my girls and—”

“And?” Gwen held out his jacket to him.

William just stared at it. “I almost forgot,” he said, in a dazed voice. “I was so happy to be out of that thrice-damned bed, I almost forgot.”

His voice cracked on the last word and he turned away, making a show of shaking out his jacket.

Gwen’s heart gave an unexpected spasm of pity. She crushed the urge to reach out to him, to comfort him. Instead, she said, her voice deliberately matter-of-fact, “Is there anyplace else your Lizzy might have gone? Does she have any other family here?”

“There might be some still in Scotland,” he said, “but I doubt it. They mostly scattered to America.”

Gwen began efficiently packing her bits and pieces back into her reticule. “What about her mother’s family?”

William glanced at her sideways, his normally open face guarded. “Lizzy’s mother was from Bengal,” he said.

“So she won’t have any other relations here, then,” said Gwen briskly. And then, because there were times when plain speaking was one of the benefits of age, “Illegitimate?”

“Legally,” said William. “Her mother and I never went through any semblance of marriage. But as far as I’m concerned, she’s as true a daughter of mine as Katherine—and that was a marriage presided over by more than one parson!”

Gwen held up her hands. “Hold your artillery, Colonel! I’m not casting aspersions on your daughter. Or her birth. The world would be a better place if every man stood by his leavings.” She had spoken a bit too vehemently. She said hastily, “What about her other siblings?”

The Colonel still looked ready to do battle. “Are they illegitimate, too, do you mean?”

“No. What does that have to do with anything? Other than your conscience.” Having scored her point, she went on, “Would your Lizzy have contacted any of them?”

William shook his head. “The boys are all in India. There’s Alex, Kat’s twin, who’s assistant to the Resident of Hyderabad, and George, Lizzy’s full brother, who’s in the service of the Begum Sumroo—she’s a sort of queen, you might say.”

“You left out the opium trader.”

“I don’t know that he’s still trading opium,” said William. “As far as I know, he’s in India still.”

“As far as you know?”

“We’re estranged,” he said briefly. “Last I heard, he was in the service of one of the Maratha chieftains—you won’t have heard the name.”

“Won’t I?” Gwen couldn’t resist showing off. “Holkar, perhaps? Or Scindia?”

William raised his sandy brows. “You’re very well informed.”

“Just because I wear a skirt doesn’t mean I can’t read a paper,” she said.

“My apologies. I should know better than to underestimate you.”

“Yes, you should.”

He didn’t know the half of it. For a mad moment, Gwen wondered if she were doing him a disservice by not telling him about the other powers that might be in play.

He didn’t need to know about the League of the Pink Carnation, but she could tell him, surely, that there had once been a flap involving French spies at Miss Climpson’s seminary, a flap in which Lizzy had been peripherally involved. It made a reasonable explanation for why a schoolgirl might be the target of French spies, leaving aside the fact that it was more likely Agnes who was the target than his Lizzy.

The moment the idea occurred to her, so did half a dozen arguments against it. It had been one of the other schoolgirls and her fiancé who had been selling information to the French, information the girl had gleaned from her father, a man high in the government. As far as Gwen knew, the girl and her fiancé were still in custody.

Besides, once opened, the topic of spies might raise uncomfortable questions. Such as why she carried a sword in her parasol.

Just because she had tended him for five endless days, attuned to every rasping breath, every fevered utterance, didn’t mean that he was worthy of her trust. What did she know of him, really? She knew every inch of his body—well, almost every inch—she knew his smell, his favorite ribald song, the mumbling noises he made as he slept, but other than that, he might be anything or anyone. He might not even be Colonel William Reid. She had only his own and his supposed older daughter’s word for it. If she was his daughter.

No. The family resemblance had been too strong to be denied. Kat Reid was William’s daughter. That much was true. It didn’t mean that any of the rest of it was.

She had come too far to be incautious now.

“Do you have everything?” she said instead.

William ran a hand along his chin. “I should like to shave before we go,” he said apologetically. “Lest someone mistake me for a pirate.”