Everything I Ever Wanted (27 page)

"Are you afraid of him?"

She remained silent.

"I will protect you."

She shook her head. The movement made her cheek brush his lips. They were both still. Then the shape of Ms mouth changed against her skin, and his breathing hitched. Tendrils of hair were moved aside by fingertips as gentle in their flutter as a butterfly's wing. He kissed the hollow below her ear. "No," she said, her mouth merely framing the word. Tears welled in her eyes. "No."

South lifted his head slowly, reluctantly. His chin rested against the soft crown of her hair. His own eyes were momentarily closed. " Does he exist, India?" he asked quietly. "I have begun to wonder."

She was glad he could not see her watery smile, or the regret that she was certain filled her eyes. He could not know, must never know, how close she came to telling him the truth just then.

"Will you tell me nothing at all?" he asked her.

"I cannot."

South released her wrists and raised his chin. "Even for your country?"

There was little space for India to turn, trapped as she was between the window and South, but she managed the thingeven managed to wedge her arms between them and place her palms flat on his chest. Then she pushed with all the strength anger afforded her. Surprised, South rocked on his heels, but he did not give ground. Instead, it was India whose feet slid backward until her spine was pressed firmly against the window.

India stared at her braced arms, extended as they were against South's hard chest. She could feel the steady beat of his heart under her palms.

"It hardly seems fair, does it?" South asked in gentle accents.

India allowed her arms to fall to her sides. She shook her head.

South cupped her chin and lifted it. "Do you want so badly to hurt me? Shall I invite one of your stinging jabs?"

"Do not be patronizing."

He sighed. "India, I must have some cooperation on your part."

She tore her chin away and slipped past him, knowing that he could stop her if he wanted to. He did not attempt to do so, and for that she was grateful. She put some distance between them. "My cooperation? Was it not enough that I came with you? I offered no resistance at the inn. None at all to Darrow. None even yesterday when you when I" Her eyes darted toward the bed, and she did not finish that thought. "What is it that I stand accused of that you would have cause to question my loyalty?"

"The plot to kill Prinny," South said flatly. "Kendall's murder. Rutherford's. There have been questions raised concerning the affair of Lady Macquey-Howell and Señor Cruz. And now there is rumor of a conspiracy against the cabinet ministers, some of whom are known to be supporters of your theatreand particular admirers of yours."

India's legs actually trembled, but she remained standing. "You cannot truly believe" The words died in her throat. She swallowed hard and tried again. "You cannot believe I am responsible for even one of those things. I would not I would never how can you think it of me?"

South did not answer immediately. His weight shifted. He raked back his dark hair. Finally, he released a long-heldbreath. "I don't know that I do," he said quietly. "You confound me, India Parr. At every turn."

Her knees would have buckled then, but South caught her by the elbow and eased her down on the stiff ladder-back chair.

"Head down," he said. He placed one hand at the nape of India's neck and pressed lightly until her head was at the level of her knees. "You need a moment for the blood to flow properly."

She would need to stand on her head to accomplish that, she thought. South had done nothing but tur her world on end since she'd met him. She had no sense of up and down any longer. She was head over bucket now, and it seemed perfectly right that she should be so.

At South's instruction, India took slow and even breaths. The pressure on her nape eased, and she was gradually allowed to rise.

"Better?" he asked.

She nodded.

"I want to help you, India. You asked why I brought you here, and that is the answer. The simplest, truest answer. Because I think you need help and don't know how to ask for it, or even that you believe you might be deserving of it."

"The colonel"

"He knows you are with me."

"Then he approves of"

South's brows drew together as he dropped to his haunches beside India's chair. "Not precisely. I did not tell him what I intended He learned of it after the fact."

"After the?"

"When he heard that you missed a performanceyou, who have not missed a performance in well over a year and when he could not immediately find me" South shrugged. "I have settled with him since I returned for Westphal's funeral. He is allowing me this time to learn the truth."

India understood what South did not say. "Because you have given him no choice."

South merely shrugged.

"You are defying him."

This observation raised his grin. "No. Nothing so alarming as that. It is merely that I am taking a different course than he would, but that is often the very reason he calls upon me."

"I don't understand."

"He cannot surround himself only with lackeys who never question what he says. Events people circumstances they often look different from where he is sitting. He has informationfactsat his fingertips that are certainly useful, but he would be the first to admit he does not always have the sense of the fit of things."

"And you do?"

"Sometimes. Not always. But the colonel would never deny me the use of my own judgment in these matters. I must never substitute my judgment for his. If I am not at liberty to do what I think is right, then I am of no real use to him." South came to his feet. He poured India a glass of water from the pitcher on the washstand and carried it to her. "Here. You appear in want of something to remove your tongue from the roof of your mouth."

Smiling weakly, she accepted the glass and drank. "He thinks I'm guilty, doesn't he?"

"It would be truer to say that he is still willing to be convinced otherwise."

The laughter that bubbled to India's lips held not a whit of good humor. She glanced at South uneasily. "There is not very much difference there."

"There is enough, India. Help me prove where your innocence lies."

She did not know what to say to that. Had there ever been a time she could lay claim to innocence? Yes, of course there had, but it was so very long ago that it seemed more often another person's life. The glass in her hand was cool, and she held it against her temple for a moment, easing the growing ache just behind her eye.

"Is it a megrim?" asked South.

India shook her head and lowered the glass. "Nothing so wicked as that." She looked up at him and asked frankly, "Why would you want to help me? If you are honest, you know you are only a little less certain of my guilt than the colonel. How can that be enough for you to want to do anything on my behalf?"

He hesitated. It was not merely that he wondered what she was prepared to hear, but that there were those things he was not necessarily prepared to admit. "Quid pro quo," he said finally.

"What?"

"You may call it quid pro quo."

"I don't understand."

"You extended your trust to me once," he reminded her. "I would offer the same to you."

"I see." Was she disappointed? India didn't know.

"You sent Doobin to my home with a message that we should meet in the park," South went on. "You did this after we had already arrived at an agreement about how we would communicate."

"That hardly speaks well of me."

"My first thought, also," he admitted. "But the more I considered your actions, the more I was able to entertain the notion that perhaps you had not acted without provocation." South returned to the wing chair and sat. Leaning forward, he rested his forearms on his knees. "Was that the way of it, India? Did someone demand you lay a trap for me?"

She said nothing.

"I asked Doobin who was with you when you gave the message to him. He told me it was only he and Mrs. Garrety who were present. Is that correct?"

India's mouth flattened briefly as she pressed her lips together. She nodded once.

"Then you received direction from someone else at an earlier time." It was not a question that he posed to her now but a fact as he saw it. "It puzzles me still when this might have happened, because so much time was spent observing your daily routine."

India stopped rolling the glass between her palms. Her fingers pressed hard on it instead. "You were watching me?"

"Yes." He did not tell her that he had not done so alone. She would not like to know how many people in his employ had assisted in the effort, Darrow among them.

"But you promised you"

He held up his hand, stopping her. "I promised I would cease to make inquiries regarding you. That is all I agreed to. And I kept that promise until I had you safely here. As for what my observations revealed the truth is, very little. If you find any peace in it, India, you have guarded your secrets well."

Mayhap she should have felt, if not some measure of peace, then at least a modicum of relief. She experienced neither. What India felt was the sensation of one being driven inexorably toward a corner. Most frustratingly, she was allowed to glimpse each exit, every escape, along the way, yet never shown properly how to reach one.

South went on. "Is there anyone who knows about the occasional work you do for the colonel?"

"No!" More quietly she added, "No one." India set her glass on a nearby table. "I promise you that is the truth."

"I'm inclined to believe you."

India felt a measure of hope mingling with her surprise. "You are?"

He nodded. "I reasoned that if you had wanted to set a trap for me yourself in the park that night, you would have placed such a message in the Gazette as would get me there. If you had informed someone elseyour protector, for instanceof your arrangement with me, he would have also used that same means of communication. The fact that Doobin came round with the message suggested to me finally that you had spoken to no one." South regarded India with one brow raised. "I seems to me that you are in the habit of keeping secrets on all fronts."

"I suppose that's true."

"It is time for you to give some of them up, India."

"I I don't"

"Do you trust me now?"

She hesitated. "I'm afraid for you."

"That is not what I asked. Do you trust me?"

"I yes. I do."

"Tell me his name, India."

India's arms clutched her middle.

"Your protector."

She bent forward at the waist.

"Who is he, India?"

"Lady Margrave." Her voice came as a mere thread of sound. "She is the Dowager Countess of Margrave."

South stared at her. She had rendered him quite mute. It was not a thing done often, and normally his sense of humor would have asserted itself. Such was not the case this time. He simply had no response for what she had just revealed, and no means at his disposal to shield India from the pain the confession caused her. As though trying to recover from the aftermath of a blow, India remained bent forward in her chair.

South had not expected that her answer would have such physical repercussions, or raise so many more questions in turn. "India. Tell me what I can do for you."

"Leave."

"I meant what can I"

"You can leave me," she said, her voice stronger now. "I want nothing so much as to be alone."

South came to his feet. "Very well." He quit the room without another word.

"There's snow earning," Mrs. Simon said, assessing the sky from the drawing room window. "Mark my words, it will be nigh to knee deep by morning light."

South looked up from the meal the housekeeper had put before him. He ate alone because India remained in her room and neither Darrow nor the widow would have supposed he might welcome their company at the table. "Then you must remain at home tomorrow," South said. "I can think of nothing that requires your attention here."

"Oh, but there is Miss Parr. If she is not well, then you and Mr. Darrow will have to"

"Fend for ourselves?" He chuckled. "I assure you, Darrow and I have been doing that for more years than we care to measure. Isn't that the way of it, Darrow?"

From his place on a stool near the hearth, Darrow paused in his whittling. "Aye."

"There you have it."

Mrs. Simon looked from one man to the other, each seeming to be perfectly at his ease, and wondered why she continued to suspect it was otherwise. Certainly it was nothing she could make her concern. "And Miss Parr? She has been abed all this day and looking not a whit better than when I saw her this morning. What if she has need of a physic?"

"Darrow will know what to do."

Now Mrs. Simon frowned deeply. "Oh, my lord, if you will allow me to speak plainly."

South was unaware that the widow had ever done anything to the contrary. "By all means," he said. "You may say whatever you wish."