Sanjay looked as bewildered as Maggie felt. “Then why did you insist on following him all this way, Your Highness?”
“It wasn’t
him
I wanted,” Usha declared. “It was the Star, of course.”
“Star?” Sanjay stammered. “Which star?”
“My
star, of course. The Star of Jaipur.” Usha glared daggers at Jeremy. “My uncle gave it to him for saving the Palace of the Winds, which he hadn’t any right to do. It was my mother’s. It was to be passed on to me.”
A single glance at Jeremy told Maggie he was completely unimpressed by this story. His ear had stopped bleeding, but his collar and cravat were now stained vermilion.
“I pleaded with my uncle not to give away the Star,” Usha continued matter-of-factly, “but he insisted that since the colonel would not take
me,
he must be rewarded somehow. And so he took what ought to have been my dower, and awarded it to a man who cared so little for it, he kept it in his pocket, instead of on a pedestal, as it deserves.”
Jeremy was frowning. He said thoughtfully, “I didn’t know the sapphire belonged to you. I thought it belonged to the maharajah.”
Usha raised her gaze to the ceiling. “God forbid my uncle should have paid anyone out of his
own
coffers! How much easier for him to pay from someone else’s, and still receive the credit for possessing so magnanimous a spirit.”
“So you came to England,” Jeremy said, speaking slowly, “with the intention of stealing the stone back?”
“Stealing?” Usha echoed, as if the word were somehow distasteful to her. “I said nothing of stealing.”
“Well, I never exactly heard you ask for it,” Jeremy pointed out. “So I can only assume you meant to—”
“I meant to
persuade
you to give it back to me,” the princess said. “But I must say, you are the most unpersuadable man I have ever met. No one has ever been as resistant to my charms as you.” This she announced with a good deal of indignation. “It was most frustrating.”
“Well,” Jeremy replied, “forgive me, but I find you much more persuasive this way than you were before, pretending you couldn’t speak English—”
Usha raised an ebony brow. “Truly? How interesting. Most men find ignorance in a woman absolutely irresistible.”
She nodded at Sanjay. “Denish, for instance.”
Sanjay, hearing his name, perked up alertly. “There is nothing I would not do for you, Princess,” he said. “Nothing!”
For a woman who ought to have been used to men falling over themselves to do her bidding, Usha looked quite pleased by this exclamation. Still, she was not finished upbraiding him for acting on his own initiative. “But to try to kill the colonel,” she chastised him. “And this is not the first time, I take it?”
“No.” Sanjay had the goodness to look ashamed of himself. “I was the man who stabbed you outside of your home, Your Grace.”
“And did you try to run me down in the street one day?” Jeremy asked curiously.
“Indeed, that was I.” Sanjay hung his head. “Undoubtedly you will wish to send for the authorities. I am willing to go to jail, knowing that all I have done, I did in service to the one true Star of Jaipur.”
Usha, looking more beautiful than ever—an expression of heartfelt delight had spread across her lovely features—reached out and touched the translator’s shoulder. “This you would do for me? Go to jail forever in this cold place?” she asked.
“You,
who have been so severe upon me, all my life?”
Sanjay snatched up the hand she’d laid upon him, and began raining kisses upon it. Between kisses, he murmured, “Anything. I would do anything for you, my beautiful, beautiful Usha. If I have ever been severe upon you it is because I, like other men, am not blind to your imperfections … they only make me love you more.”
Instead of being insulted by any hint that she might possess flaws, as Maggie would have expected a woman like Usha would be, she let out a soft cry of delight. Then she sobered. “But you know, Denish, that love between you and I can never be. I must return to India to marry the man my uncle has chosen for me—”
“No!” Sanjay pressed her hand to his heart, as if she had
wounded him there. “No, never. We will stay here. I will find work. There is much I can do—”
Maggie was so touched by the tender scene before her that she actually felt tears stinging her own eyes. A glance around the room showed her that she was not the only one who felt this way. Both Berangère and Augustin seemed deeply moved, as did Anne and Alistair, who had not, to Maggie’s surprise, fled the gallery with the others. Even Peters looked less cocky than usual.
Only Jeremy seemed immune to the moment’s poignancy, but that did not keep Maggie from abruptly stepping forward. Before she knew what she was about, she had shaken the Star of Jaipur out of her reticule, and placed it into the hand of an astonished Usha.
“Here,” she said, in a hoarse voice as she folded the princess’s fingers around the heavy jewel. “This might help. I believe it belongs to you, anyway.”
The immensity of what she’d just done didn’t even occur to Maggie until she stepped away from the young couple and glanced, with tear-filled eyes, at Jeremy. What she saw in his face brought her back to reality in a hurry.
Jeremy looked shocked. More than just shocked: About as horrified as she’d undoubtedly looked when she’d first heard the shot from Sanjay’s gun ring out. And he was looking at
her,
those silver eyes were boring into
her,
inscrutable as ever … .
Oh, Lord! Maggie froze in mid-step, her consternated gaze locked on his. What had she done?
She had just given away a twenty-four-carat sapphire, that’s what! How much was a twenty-four-carat sapphire worth? Obviously quite a lot, if the way Usha and Sanjay were hopping about so enthusiastically behind her was any indication. Berangère looked as if someone had just slapped her, a sure sign that what Maggie had done had been foolish in the extreme, and Peters’s mouth was agape, while Augustin and Maggie’s family merely looked confused.
Dear God! What had she done?
But even as she stood there, twisting her fingers in confusion, the princess and her former translator were rushing forward to thank her, taking her hands and supplicating themselves over them. Then, when her cheeks had turned crimson and she thought she might die on the spot, they turned their attention to Jeremy … .
But Jeremy shrugged out of their reach without a word, turned, and left the gallery, followed quickly by his valet, who ran after his master, calling, “Colonel? Colonel, wait!”
Dumbstruck, Maggie stared after them. What had happened? Why was Jeremy so angry? Good Lord, what had she done?
It wasn’t until someone gave her quite a hard push in the back that she roused herself. Turning, Maggie was surprised to see her sister Anne standing behind her, her face pale as alabaster.
“Don’t just stand there,” Anne said, pointing toward the doors through which Jeremy had just disappeared. “Go after him, Maggie!”
“Oh, dear,” Maggie said. She chewed her lower lip nervously. “I oughtn’t to—I suppose I shouldn’t have given them the sapphire. After all, it was Jeremy’s—”
Both of Anne’s eyebrows came down in a rush. “Don’t be stupid,” she hissed. “It’s got nothing to do with
that.
Just
go!”
Maggie needed no further urging. A second later, she was headed for the doors through which Jeremy had just stormed. Her father, however, had risen from the couch upon which he’d sunk earlier in the evening, not moving from it even when he heard gunfire. Now, he caught her by the arm.
“Margaret,” he said eagerly. “Where are you going? We have so much to talk about, you and I. I understand that you’ll be going to see the Prince of Wales on Monday. As it happens, I have nothing to do on Monday. Might I recommend myself as an escort? It really isn’t seemly for young women to be traipsing about London unescorted—”
Maggie’s only response was a snarl, with which she jerked her arm from her father’s grasp, and rushed out onto Bond Street. The weather was no better than it had been during the day, and Maggie, in her sleeveless gown and delicate slippers, immediately began to shiver. Pellets of ice rained down on her from the sky, which, though it was close to nine o’clock in the evening, glowed pinkly, the low cloud cover reflecting the lights of London. She was just in time
to see the Rawlings curricle, pulled by a pair of matched chestnuts, clatter away from the curb.
Maggie swore beneath her breath and raised an arm. Hansom cab after hansom cab rattled past her, spraying her white satin skirt with dirty slush, but it never even occurred to her to return inside for her wrap. Dodging pedestrian traffic as well as horse-drawn vehicles, Maggie waded out into the street, one bare white arm raised, her satin shoes soon soaked through with icy water. Miraculously, a vacant hansom finally noticed her, and the driver, alarmed by her state of undress, started to hop down from his seat to help her into the carriage. Maggie, however, gathered up her skirts and was inside before he could even tip his hat.
“Twenty-two Park Lane,” she cried, praying she had enough coins in her reticule to pay the fare. “And please hurry.”
The driver sat back down and hastily chirruped his single steed, a tired-looking bay whose breath rose through the London fog in smoky tendrils. “Yes, miss. Beggin’ your pardon, miss, but oughtn’t you be wearin’ a coat?”
Maggie, realizing only then that she was freezing, dove to reach for the lap blanket, which she wrapped about her shoulders, despite the fact it was made of very scratchy wool, and smelled rather fetid. “Yes,” she said. “Please hurry.”
To his credit, the driver tried. But it was Saturday night. Though the theaters had not yet let out, there was a good deal of traffic in the streets, which were icy, besides. Congestion clogged many of the thoroughfares, and where there was congestion, there were beggars and women of questionable virtue, the former pleading for pennies, the latter scanning each vehicle for gentlemen with whom they might pass an hour or two going round the park, snug beneath a lap blanket. Lord knew how many lice-ridden ladies of the evening the blanket round her shoulders had sheltered. Then there were the flower and orange sellers hawking their wares in the middle of the street, further stalling traffic. It was nearly an hour, by Maggie’s estimates, before the hansom cab pulled up in front of the Rawlings town house, and by that time, her teeth were chattering with the cold, and she
was wishing she’d been just a little less hasty, and had waited for her hat and muff before bursting out of the gallery.
Mercifully, she had enough money to pay the driver. She thanked him, and hurried up the steps to the house. One of the footmen, hearing the clatter of a carriage pulling up, opened the door before she’d even had time to pull the key from her bag, and cried, in tones of astonishment, “Miss Herbert? Is that you, then?”
Maggie, hurrying past him into the house, soon saw what had shocked him so. A glance at the wall-sized mirror to one side of the marble foyer revealed a tall girl with her hair mostly falling down, a once-white dress now flecked all over with wet gray soot and brown mud, her skin very nearly blue with cold, except where it was bright red with frostbite. She couldn’t feel her toes anymore, and the beading on her train was torn where she’d snagged it on the hansom cab’s rear wheel as she’d descended.
“Never mind that now,” she said, mostly to herself. “Has His Grace returned, Freddie?”
The footman looked surprised. “Yes, miss. Been home this past half hour. Retired straightaway to ‘is room. Let me call for your maid, Miss Margaret. You must be needin’ somethin’ warm to drink—”
“No, no, don’t bother.” Maggie had already started up the stairs, hiking up her skirt nearly to her knees. “I’m quite all right.”
“But miss—”
“I’m all right!” Maggie hurried up to the door to the Green Room just as Evers was emerging from it, an empty crystal decanter in his hands. If she’d thought the footman looked startled from her blowzy appearance, his astonishment was nothing compared to that of the butler’s, whose eyes very nearly popped out of his head at the sight of her.
“Miss Margaret!” Evers cried. “Are you unwell?”
Panting, Maggie said, between gulps of breath, “I am perfectly well, thank you, Evers. But I must see His Grace right away.”
Evers raised his eyebrows. “But Miss Margaret, I’m afraid that’s quite impossible. His Grace has retired for the
evening. He had a terrible accident, you know. One of his ears was torn quite painfully … .”
Maggie noticed that Evers’s gaze had strayed toward her chest, which was rising and falling as she tried to catch her breath. She couldn’t exactly blame him. She was aware that in her haste to climb the stairs, she might have disarranged a few things that, until then, had been adequately covered. “Evers,” she said breathlessly. “I must see His Grace on a matter of utmost urgency.”
“It will have to wait until morning,” the butler said firmly, his eyes back on her face. “Really, Miss Margaret, but you look extraordinarily pale. Are you quite well? Might I offer you some sort of restorative—”
Maggie’s patience snapped. “You might offer to get out of my way,” she shouted, so loudly that the butler very nearly dropped the decanter he held. “I’m going to see the duke, and I don’t care what you or anybody else has to say about it!”
And with that, Maggie pushed past him, laid her hand upon the door latch, and flung open the duke’s bedroom door.