The Sandalwood Princess (30 page)

“No wonder he became so obsessed with the pearl.”

Amanda gazed thoughtfully at the mouthpiece in her hand. “Yet it wasn’t the pearl he wanted, was it?”

“No, but to believe so was far less humiliating to such a man than to admit the truth.”

Amanda looked up to meet the rani’s dark, liquid gaze. “Why did you give it to me?” she asked.

Her cousin sighed. “A complicated story. Lord Hedgrave has agents throughout India. For years, however, I found it easy enough to remain inaccessible. I waited until his wife was dead. Then I came to Calcutta, and awaited the approach of his pawns. Naturally, their clumsy attempts failed. To behold the Lioness is not to capture her. Eventually, I thought, the marquess must come himself, as I’d countless times dared him to do.”

“But he didn’t. He sent the—that thief.”

“When I first came to Calcutta, the Falcon was unknown. Within a few short years, all India spoke of him. By that time, I had met you, and discovered a heart like mine beat in your breast. Like mine,” the rani added with a smile, “were my heart not quite so black with sin. A lioness lives within you, nonetheless.”

“I’m no lioness. I haven’t a fraction of your wisdom or experience. Why give it to me?” Amanda demanded. “You knew how naive I was—and how unscrupulous
he
was. You were a match for him. I wasn’t. Didn’t you care what happened to me? Did you
want
Hedgrave to get the pearl?”

The princess reached out to take Amanda’s hand. “I knew you would never let him have it,” she said quietly. “Never. You know that as well, Amanda.”

“I don’t know anything like it, and I can’t believe you could be so reckless as to rely on me. You didn’t have to. You could have relied on yourself. Why did you have to make a perfectly simple matter so devilish complicated?” Amanda disengaged her hand and took up her neglected pipe. “This is no explanation at all,” she grumbled. “I might have expected it.” She inhaled deeply of the lightly scented smoke.

“There is more,” said her cousin imperturbably. “I shall—” She stopped and listened. “Someone comes.”

Amanda, too, heard footsteps in the hall beyond. She looked up.

Padji’s immense form filled the doorway. “If you please, mistress,” he said with every appearance of disgust. “Visitors.”

Amanda tensed. “Roderick,” she whispered. “He’s found out I’m here.”

The rani shook her head. “At this late hour?” she answered Padji reprovingly. “Send them away.”

Amanda relaxed and brought the comforting pipe to her mouth again.

Padji did not move.

“If you please, mistress, they are mad,” he said. “One holds a knife to my back. The other a pistol.”

The smoke she’d just inhaled caught in Amanda’s windpipe, choking her. Coughing and gasping, she watched through streaming eyes as Padji grudgingly moved aside and two men entered the room. Two tall, fair-haired men.

Amanda wiped her eves, but that didn’t help. She was hallucinating. What in blazes was in the pipe?

One of the men was hurrying towards her. No.

“Amanda,” he said. “My love, I—” He halted midstride, his eyes riveted upon the rani.

Dazedly, Amanda looked at her cousin. The princess held a pistol, which was pointed straight at him.

“Back, Falcon,” said the princess. “Your elderly friend will put away his weapon or I shall drive a bullet through your black heart.”

She met Amanda’s startled gaze and smiled. “Men,” she said. “Just like children. They never think.”

Lord Hedgrave—for that was the “elderly friend”— handed Padji his pistol. “Let him be, Nalini,” the marquess said quietly. Your quarrel is with me.”

“Is it?” the princess answered haughtily without looking at him. “I have no quarrels with feeble old men.”

The marquess laughed. “Wicked girl.”

“I am no longer a girl, Richard Whitestone.”

“Perhaps not. Yet wicked you are.”

The rani threw him a careless glance. She lay the pistol down.

The Falcon took a cautious step towards Amanda. She glared at him. “Go to the devil,” she said.

“Ah, Miss Cavencourt,” said the marquess. “I didn’t know you at first. No wonder my travelling companion behaved so heedlessly.” He turned to the rani. “When I first made the lady’s acquaintance, she wore a smock and breeches,” he explained. “The sari is a deal more becoming. Don’t you agree, my lord?” he asked the Falcon.

Midnight-blue eyes bored into Amanda. “Yes,” he answered hoarsely.

“Go to hell,” she said. Her heart pounded so she thought the room must thunder with it. “You sicken me.”

“If my beloved ones so wish it,” Padji offered, “I shall cut out the dogs’ hearts.”

“Perhaps later,” the rani said. “Go away, Padji.”

Padji left.

“You as well, child,” the princess continued. “Take your Falcon into the garden. I would speak privately with this pitiful old man.”

“So you
will
speak to me, Nalini?” Lord Hedgrave asked as he crossed the room to her. “After all these years, and all my crimes?”

She shrugged. “Perhaps we shall speak. Perhaps I shall poison you. Who knows?”

Lord Hedgrave dropped gracefully onto the cushions beside her.

The Falcon held out his hand to Amanda. “Take me to the garden,” he said softly.

The woman he followed outside was the goddess he dreamed of for eighteen long months. She wore a sari of gold, but the moonlight transformed it to liquid silver, shimmering in sensuous curves about her slim form. Her long, dark hair fell in rippling waves upon her shoulders and back. The sari draped gracefully to conceal one arm. Her other lay bare and smooth, but for the small sleeve of her brocade
cboli.
Thin gold bangles tinkled as she moved, and behind her trailed the faint scent of patchouli.

She led him down a path thick with flowers and shrubs, then on to the ornamental pool at the garden’s heart. There she stood, her exotic countenance shut against him, her stance cool and straight. Unwelcoming. Unyielding.

He’d been mad to come. Where would he find the magic words to unlock the barrier his folly had built between them?

“Amanda,” he began.

“I don’t even know your name,” she said with chilly politeness. “Your
real
name.”

Remorse smote him in a swelling ache.

“It’s Philip,” he said. “Philip Andrew Astonley.” He hesitated, then continued doggedly. “Viscount Felkoner. Of Felkonwood, Derbyshire.”

“So that was you,” she said, her tones expressionless. “Mrs. Gales showed me the piece in the
Gazette.
I should have realised. Felkoner—Falcon. I collect you chose that particular pseudonym to spite your father. The article said you lost two brothers. My condolences.”

He didn’t want polite condolences. He didn’t want polite anything. He wanted to pull her into his arms and make her love him again, make her eyes fill with trust and tenderness once more. How had he thought he could live without that, without her?

“None of my predecessors will be greatly missed,” he said stiffly. “A pity, because my father at least would have appreciated the irony. He was so certain I’d be the first to go. Not through natural causes, of course,” he added, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. “The gallows, perhaps, or some equally sordid conclusion.”

“There’s time yet to prove him right.” She stared fixedly at the water. “You tempt Fate by coming here.”

“I had no choice.” He took a step nearer. She moved two paces back. His hands clenched at his sides.

“I wanted to come after you,” he said miserably. “I wanted to come right away, but I didn’t dare leave his confounded lordship out of my sight for an instant. How he found a chance to write you, I’ll never know. If I’d caught him at it, I’d have broken both his arms myself.”

She didn’t respond.

“Dammit, why didn’t you let Padji kill us both?” he demanded. “There were no witnesses, and—”

“Padji explained that,” she said. “It is bad
ton
to murder a peer of the realm.”

“Indeed? Well, it’s perfectly good form to kill a thief. He meant to kill me. I saw it in his eyes. But he didn’t. Why?” he asked. “Was that your doing?”

She shot him a brief, scornful glance. “You can thank yourself. It was your last maudlin speech changed his mind. Really, I had not imagined even you could sink so low. Not that it worked quite the way you intended. Oh, he believed you, amazingly enough, but he didn’t spare you out of pity. He decided a lifetime burning in the fires of unrequited love was a more fitting punishment.”

Hot shame swept his face. That was her opinion of him. She thought his dying words merely some pathetic attempt to save his own skin. As though he’d have begged for mercy, when all he’d wanted then was to be put out of his misery. She couldn’t know how wisely Padji had judged.

“Padji knew exactly what he was doing,” he admitted, his face flaming again. “He knew.
She
knew,” he added, nodding towards the palace. “How, I can’t say. She’s not quite human, is she? But I’ve had time enough to reflect, and I could swear they knew I’d want you the moment I met you. You were meant to be my undoing, Amanda.”

That earned him another disbelieving glance.

“You were,” he went on determinedly. “You undid me utterly. I couldn’t understand how I could be so careless. How I could misjudge, time and again. I, the Falcon. After you stole back the statue—the first time—I spent weeks in London trying to discover where you’d gone. Weeks. The Falcon should have solved that in a few hours.”

“You’d never been on that end of a robbery before. I daresay the shock addled your wits.” She moved several steps away.

He followed. “Do you really believe that was all? While I was in London, trying to track you down, I learned I’d inherited. All my life my father tried to crush me, as though I were some unspeakable vermin polluting his family. Suddenly, I found myself lord of all he’d denied me: his castle, his vast acres, his money—all mine. Yet the very day I got the happy news, I headed for Yorkshire.”

Her face turned sharply to him, her eyes lit with incredulity. “You knew—before you came—and you travelled all the way to Kirkby Glenham—and worked as my
servant?
What the devil is wrong with you?”

“You,” he said.

She refused to understand. “It was the damned pearl,” she muttered. “It’s definitely cursed. It makes men
insane.”

“It’s nothing to do with the dratted pearl,” he snapped. “The Tear of Joy was a convenient excuse, I admit. It made you a professional problem, and I thought I could solve you as easily as all the others. Yet the truth was always there. I locked it away in the dark, but couldn’t stifle it. It never stopped trying to break out.”

“There’s no truth in you,” she said coldly. “I stopped believing in you the instant I realised who you were. I don’t know what your game is now, and I don’t care. I won’t play.” She moved past him, and headed back the way they’d come.

Philip stood a moment while despair warred with need. He’d journeyed all this way, spent months on another curst ship. This time he’d travelled without her, and the way had been long and lonely indeed. He would
not
go back to his great, empty tomb of a house without her. If he could not return with her, he’d not return at all.

She’d walked away with cool dignity, unhurried. The Falcon darted after her, and caught her from behind. His hand covered her mouth before she could cry out, while his other arm dragged her back against him. Swiftly he pulled her into a narrow path sheltered by tall shrubs.

She fought him, just as she had that night so long ago, and her blows were no gentler now.

“Stop it,” he growled. “Drat you,
stop
it.”

She slammed her heel against his shin.

“Damnation,” he muttered.

Her teeth caught at his hand. He yanked it away. She had scarcely an instant to draw breath for a scream before his knife was out and resting lightly upon her throat. She stilled.

“That’s better,” he said. “Now
listen
to me, damn you.”

“Bastard,” she breathed.

“I love you,” he said. “I’ve loved you from the moment you jammed your elbow into my belly. I loved you that night in Calcutta and after, on the ship. I loved you after you stole back your sandalwood princess, even while I hated you and wanted to strangle you. I loved you the whole time in Yorkshire while I plotted to get it back. And I loved you when you held a gun to my heart and stole the pearl and your princess away again.”

She made a slight movement. He pulled his arm more tightly against her waist to mould the length of her back firmly to him. She gasped, but subsided against him.

“I have
always
loved you,” he continued angrily. “I can’t help that I’ve behaved like an unscrupulous, dishonourable, obstinate swine the whole time, because that’s what I am. Damn it, Amanda, can’t you understand? You understand
everything.”

“I understand,” she answered breathlessly. “I just wasn’t sure you did. Will you please put away the knife? It makes me nervous.”

“If I put it away,
I’ll
be nervous.”

“You? The Falcon? You’re not afraid of anything.”