“I suppose Amabel will put us up for a while.” Amabel, a pretty little black-haired armful, had been Julian’s
chere amie
for the six months before he was arrested. In point of fact, the house where she lived had once belonged to Julian, but she’d started crying one night, worried about her future when he would tire of her, she said, and he’d ended up signing the house over to her. Another of those quixotic gestures, he supposed, but not one that he particularly regretted.
Jim shook his head. “Ahh … she’s took up with some other gent. Sold the ’ouse and gone off to the Continent with im. Didn’t think to see you again, if you take my meaning.”
“Money-grubbing wench,” Julian said without heat. Oh, well, he’d been getting tired of Amabel anyway, though the loss of the house rankled. “What we’ll do is hole up at an inn for the night and tomorrow travel down to Gordon Hall. That green-eyed little vixen’ll get the surprise of her life. I’ll have those emeralds out of her if I have to wring her neck.”
Via a smuggled-out message—it’d cost a packet, too—Julian had managed to convey his suspicions as to what had happened to the emeralds to Jim. Jim had been charged with keeping an eye on the little witch to make sure she didn’t dispose of the gems— or make a run for it. Although with Julian in gaol it had been doubtful that she would see the need. If she was smart she’d stay put until the heat was off, then dispose of the stones at her leisure. And Julian had the idea that she was very, very smart.
“Uh, Julie.”
There was something in Jim’s tone that caused Julian to glance sharply at him. “What now?”
Jim, looking unhappy, fished inside the front of his shirt. After a moment he extracted something that he passed to Julian. Accepting it, Julian didn’t even need to look at the hard, cool object stretched across his palm before he knew what it was: the bracelet that belonged to the emeralds.
“How did you come by this?” Julian’s voice was tight.
“Well, see, she was gone by the time I got down to Gordon ’All. It was right after you tole me, but she’d ’ad a week or so, you know, and she was gone. I put out the word on ’er and the emeralds, in case she tried to sell ’em. A friend ’o mine sent word that a few days back ’e ’ad bought somethin’ I might be interested in, and when I got there it was that there bracelet. ’E’d bought it from a gentry-mort, ’e said. An’ I bought it from ’im.”
“A lady? Pretty chit with silver-blond hair and big green eyes?”
“Actually, ’ow ’e described ’er was a red’eaded whore.”
“A redheaded whore?” Julian was incredulous. By no stretch of the imagination could the chit he’d suspected be described in such terms.
“That’s what Spider said. But then ’e tole me the name of the gent what sent ’er to ’im, and I checked with ’im. Seems the red’ead ’ad another gentry-mort stayin’ with ’er. This one was a real looker, with real fair hair and green eyes, just like you said. And there was a little lass, too.”
“And so where is my lady Green Eyes now?” Intent on his prey, Julian pounced on the part of the information that interested him and disregarded the rest.
“Uh …” Jim rubbed his finger down the center of his nose, a habit of his when he was distressed. “You ain’t gonna like this part of it.”
“So tell me.”
“Seems like the whore and the chit and the little lass sold that bracelet to get some money. The next day they was on a ship. To Ceylon.”
“Ceylon!” For a moment Julian felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach.
“Told you you wasn’t gonna like it.”
“What about the emeralds? Did she sell the rest of them before she left?”
Jim shook his head. “I couldn’t find ’ide nor ’air of the rest. And if I couldn’t find ’em, they ain’t in London.”
“Damn it to bloody hell!” Julian slammed his fist into the side of the carriage. It hurt, which didn’t make him feel any better. For a long moment he sat there, nursing his bruised hand and thinking furiously.
“You gotta put it outta your mind, Julie. We need to lay low for a while, get outta London, You’re supposed to be bloody dead, remember? We got enough to catch a packet to France—”
“France, hell! We’re going after those emeralds.”
Jim groaned and shook his head. “I just knew you was gonna say that. Can’t you let those bloody things go? They’ve caused you nothin’ but trouble already.”
Julian flicked him a look. “You don’t have to come with me.”
Jim snorted. “If you go, I go. But we ain’t got enough money.”
Julian smiled grimly. “We’ll sell the bracelet. That should bring more than enough to get us to Ceylon.”
X
S
rinagar … verdant land. Never had the name seemed so appropriate as when Anna set eyes on the estate again after an absence of three quarters of a year. Despite the humidity, which made the air almost too thick to breathe, she jumped to her feet and removed her hat to improve the view as the ox cart in which they were riding rocked into sight of the Big House.
“Missy sit. Missy fall,” the coolie driving them scolded, but Anna paid him no heed. Ruby, with an impatient “Tch-tch,” pulled her down again, but Anna’s eyes never left the house.
It was a large house by English standards, made to look even larger by the verandas that surrounded it on all sides. The dazzling white walls were set off by cool green shutters. When Anna and Paul had been in residence, green-striped awnings had shaded many of the windows. The awnings were missing now, and the once well-kept lawn had degenerated into a waist-high tangle of weeds. The estate had been on the market since Graham had acquired it. Anna, fearful that Graham might learn the identity of Srinagar’s purchaser, had let Ruby, using her maiden name and money from the sale of the rest of the emeralds, buy the property from the broker. Ruby had then, in a private transaction that Graham could not possibly get wind of, turned the property over to Anna. The funds that were left over from the purchase would be enough to get Srinagar back on its feet again, as well as provide a small nest egg for herself and Chelsea.
“Mama, isn’t anyone here?” Chelsea asked in a small voice, her hand creeping into Anna’s. Anna cast a quick look down at her daughter and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.
“How could anyone be here, since they didn’t know we were coming?” Anna asked reasonably. “We’ll get all the servants back soon enough, don’t worry.”
Chelsea said nothing more, but continued to look wide-eyed at the house. The ox cart jerked to a halt before the front door.
“Come on, chicken, we’re home.” Anna’s tone was bracing as she jumped to the ground. After the nearly day-long journey from Colombo, it felt good to stretch her legs. When Chelsea continued to stare at the house without moving, Anna reached up to lift the child out of the cart and set her down.
“It’ll be cooler inside.”
Ruby made a face at Anna behind Chelsea’s back. “Place is spooky,” she muttered, Anna threw her a quelling look and tried not to notice how tightly Chelsea clung to her mother’s hand as they entered the house.
As Anna had predicted, it was much cooler there. The long windows were built into recesses, which made the interior surprisingly dark. Dust lay inches thick over everything, and the insidious rot that was so much an enemy of all things remotely perishable in Ceylon had gotten a good start on overtaking the house and furnishings. Curtains and carpets stank of mold, and great greenish-gray mildew stains had formed in the corners of the rooms near the ceilings. To make matters worse, an army of spiders the size of Anna’s fist had colonized the bedrooms. Ruby took one look and was all for heading back to Cap’n Rob and his ship, and thence to England. Anna had her work cut out for her to persuade Ruby that all these deficiencies could, in relatively short order, be corrected. Chelsea stayed close by her mother’s skirts. Anna was perturbed by the child’s wide-eyed silence, but she told herself that it was only natural that Chelsea be subdued under the circumstances. Once the Big House was in order and Chelsea was used to being home, the child would gradually revert to the ebullient little girl whose laughter had once echoed off these walls.
It took much effort, but over the course of the next few weeks matters at Srinagar improved out of all recognition. The morning after their arrival, Kirti appeared out of nowhere, sensing in the uncanny fashion of the Tamils that her English family was back. Kirti and Chelsea greeted each other with loud cries. Tears rolled down Kirti’s plump brown cheeks as she cuddled her beloved nursling.
“Missy, missy, oh my little missy!” Kirti, her arms tight around Chelsea, rolled tear-wet eyes up to Anna. “Bless you, memsahib, for bringing her back.”
“Kirti, I’ve missed you!” Chelsea hugged the old ayah as if she would never let her go. Anna felt her own eyes grow moist as she watched the pair. In that moment, Anna realized just how very bereft Chelsea had been. Their removal to England had coincided with the loss of everything, except for her mother, the child had loved: Papa, ayah, home. Anna was suddenly desperately glad that she was able to give back to Chelsea a little of what she had lost. All at once the theft of the emeralds did not seem nearly so reprehensible. Wasn’t there a saying about the end justifying the means? Chelsea had needed to come home.
With Kirti to take charge of Chelsea, Anna was left free to attack the worst of the neglect, with Ruby’s help. Great winged insects were swept from the house along with dust and stray leaves; bedding and window hangings were aired or replaced; floors and walls and windows were scrubbed. In the mysterious way that news always managed to spread about the island—Anna had never been sure whether it was clairvoyance or something more nearly resembling jungle drums—the rest of the household staff began to drift back by ones and twos.
A week after their arrival, Raja Singha, the imperturbable magician whom Paul had always referred to with enormous understatement as their house-boy, appeared on his elephant with all his worldly goods strapped behind him. Anna had rarely been so glad to see anyone in her life. Raja Singha was the Ceylonese equivalent of an English major domo, with a touch of black magic thrown in. As if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to appear out of nowhere, he responded to Anna’s joyous greeting with nothing more than a solemn nod. He then proceeded to transfer his belongings back into the mud-and-thatch hut beyond the garden that had been his home from the time Paul and Anna had first arrived in Ceylon. Within an hour of his arrival he had taken over the running of the house. In his own silent and inscrutable way Raja Singha drove the rest of the staff without mercy. As a result, the work was completed in half the time Anna had guessed it might take. It was certainly pleasant, she reflected, to be able to crawl into bed at night without having to worry about what kind of creature one’s toes might encounter between the sheets.
Sleeping alone in the bedroom she and Paul had shared proved impossible. At night Anna would fall into bed, exhausted, only to lie awake while images of Paul flickered through her mind. Although she hated to admit it even to herself, a smidgen of guilt might have been part of the reason she was so afflicted. Because sometimes, in the dead of night, Paul’s dear face and form grew blurry to her mind’s eye. Instead she saw a darkly handsome visage with wicked midnight-blue eyes; felt the strength of a tall, muscular, overwhelmingly masculine body clamped to hers; experienced again the devastation of a bold stranger’s kiss and touch. Then, to her secret mortification, her body would burn for more of the same. She would toss and turn, fighting the shameful feelings that grew stronger as time passed, refusing to allow herself to dream of a dark, impudent stranger who had dared to treat her as a woman, not a lady.
On more than one occasion, she rose from her bed before dawn and visited the solitary grave on the knoll behind the house, where she would keep a lonely vigil until the sun began to creep over the horizon. Then, like a thief in the night, she would creep back into the house.
Still the image of the housebreaker refused to be erased. At night his shade came to torment her at least as often as Paul’s, pushing aside her gentle husband’s smiling face with the memory of how his mouth had claimed hers, of how her flesh had grown hot under his hands. Where Paul’s ghost racked her heart, the housebreaker’s racked her body. Tormented and ashamed, Anna could find no surcease from the longings that plagued her. Quite disregarding her mind, her healthy young woman’s flesh hungered. Try as she might, she could not drive from her dreams the way the housebreaker had made her feel. That she could fantasize so about another man, and not just any man but a stranger, a criminal, with Paul not yet a year in his grave, appalled her.
Sick with guilt, she took what steps she could to alleviate her nightly suffering. To that end she moved into one of the other bedrooms, a large sunny room overlooking the rear instead of the front lawn. The bed was small and narrow, almost austere, designed for one, not two. The nursery was just along the hall. Anna took comfort from the knowledge that Chelsea was nearby. In this new setting, free of memories of the days and nights she had shared with her husband, Paul’s shade haunted her less. But with Paul’s lessening grip on her dreams, the housebreaker gained strength. He came to her almost nightly, kissing her as he had kissed her that night at Gordon Hall, his hand hard on her breast. And so, ashamed, she writhed and burned.
With Raja Singha to see to the house, Anna’s only remaining worry was to find someone to oversee the growing of the tea. More from necessity than choice, Paul had always performed that function himself. His efforts had sometimes been less than successful, although Anna felt disloyal even admitting such a thing to herself. Still, Paul had been a gentleman, not a planter. When they’d arrived in Ceylon, she an eighteen-year-old bride and he scarcely older, he’d known next to nothing about the cultivation of tea plants. Over the years he’d read a great deal and learned a little, although from one cause or another Srinagar had never turned a steady profit. But now that, thanks to the emeralds, she could afford to do so, Anna was determined to hire the best overseer she could find. She meant to make a success of Srinagar this time.