Authors: Michelle Woodward
What she was looking for exactly could not be described in any words accepted by high society.
As India studied the satin sheen of her skin in her reflection, she considered what it might be like to take in her rare beauty from the outside. The pomegranate hue of her lips, fantastic green eyes that sat like jewels in her finely shaped skull and intimidated every English gentleman she had ever met from the ages of six to sixty. She dabbed on the last slick of kohl the ama had taught her how to make at the tender age of twelve to highlight those spectacular orbs and turned her attention to the gown on the bed.
The rose silk was cut low over her full bosom. Unlike the high, tight line of most of the peaches and cream ladies around her, India's breasts were full, heavy, and came together with a glorious pucker that promised a most fantastic sight when released from their constraints. The gown was fitted tightly under the line of her chest to showcase the waist that was trim without the constraints of a corset. It was almost indecent, the way her abdomen rippled underneath the fabric, but India had never been one to care much about what others thought of her. She wanted to create an effect with her presence that would burn itself onto the consciousness of every man and woman present so that she would know for certain that every man who saw her that night would also be seeing her in their dreams. And their wives would know.
Despite the promised dullness of the evening, India felt a small thrill enter her blood as the carriage pulled up outside of the Davenports. She slipped in unnoticed after giving the butler that certain look, and was prepared to observe the wash of humanity from a small balcony. It was only moments, however, before her grandparents located her—hardly a difficulty considering she stood out from the simpering ladies around her like a jewel in a brass setting. They dragged her off to meet the Morningshires, and Levenworths, and all manners of families whose sons would be appearing on lists of eligible bachelors all over London before the year closed. India made note of which mothers clutched their sons to their bosoms protectively when they met her, and made sure to bat her eyelashes at them in particular. How she detested people who treated her as if she was an exotic animal, to be caged due to her teeth. Well if they wanted teeth, she thought to herself, draping herself on the arm of a short, simpering, pink-skinned lord, then teeth they would get, and claws to boot.
She was caught in the trap of Lady Morningshire prattling on about the latest modiste who had managed to make a mockery out of what the matron loosely referred to as her style, when out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a change in the atmosphere around her. It was as if an invisible wave passed over a group of women, but the curious thing about it was how it managed to ripple all throughout every group. What was the locus, the center of such a force? India glued one eye to the abhorrent lady, and kept one peeled for the source of the disturbance.
He was surprisingly difficult to spot, given the effect he was having on the female population of the room. When she finally caught sight of the man that was making every well-bred lady in the room sit up and take notice, he was extracting his hand from the white glove of one Lady Eventide, a woman twenty years India's senior, and seemingly unaware of this fact in the face of a gentleman of middling height with close-cropped dark hair. India did not quite understand what all the fuss was about; gentlemen she took notice of tended to be prime physical specimens, and although the breadth of this particular man's shoulders seemed wider than most, from the back, he did not appear to be of particular noteworthy appearance. She allowed him to slip out of her mind, although the allure of mystery still remained. What was it about him that was causing the near-swoon of all the ladies in the room? It could not be their stays, for no other gentleman in the room seemed to be having quite the same effect.
Perhaps this was no gentleman.
A parlay with Lady Eventide revealed that the man was named Robert Cooper, and that he was a duke. Little else was known about him save for the fact that he had just returned from a rather pocket-bending trip across the seas to the states. Some said he had been attempting to interest the businessmen there in a venture to join forces with the East India Company, while others maintained that his interest lay in the far more loose women that the states bred at immeasurable rate.
“They say they are two laws away from making brothels legal,” chortled Lord Eventide, even as high spots of color appeared on his wife's cheeks at such non-parlor talk. He quickly choked the laugh back at her severe look, and the momentary discomfort of the married pair allowed India the chance to finally slip away, unnoticed, onto the second floor balcony, to an alcove from which she was well hidden from view. She was relieved to be rid of the presence of every person below her, of the insipid conversations that were at once prim and simultaneously absolutely rife with gossip so stupendously grotesque and scandalous in nature that India's head would have swam if she did not feel absolutely above it all.
She heaved a deep sigh and watched the fabric of her gown rise and fall with the breath. It was in moments like these that she wished most of all that her mother was by her side. For all of her ridicule of the ton, she envied the young ladies below whose mothers watched them like hawks and attempted to parade them in front of eligible bachelors like so many decorated tarts in a kitchen, glistening with the fruit of youth, glazed over with the falsified sugar of rouge, excitement, and silk.
India had long ago gleaned the nature of her parentage and made her peace with it. There were years where she labored under the horrid delusion that Lord Davenport had indeed been her sire, despite the emotional distance she always felt from him, far more than was normal for a child whose father doted on them so incessantly. Upon receiving her mother's letter, she realized that the gulf between them had not only been natural, it had also sprung up between her and every person she would come into contact with for the rest of her life. So far, the secret had been kept by the Augustina family, leaving everyone to believe that her unusual coloring came from far too much sun and a very distant relative who had had a drop or two of mixed blood from Spanish conquistadors. The details had escaped the many, shrouding India in a cloak of mystery all her own.
Watching the swirl of fabric and hair and cravats below, India leaned against the railing and felt like a queen bee surveying her hive. Would there ever be a match for her down below in the swirl of monotonous cream?
“Like sheep, aren't they?” asked a male voice by her side, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Taking a moment to compose herself, unwilling to allow her new companion to observe that he had disquieted her, India turned to the man.
His dark hair was thick, and he was much taller than she had expected. On second glance, perhaps he appeared larger not in height, but just the mere physical presence of the mysterious man that had parted the crowd like a biblical personage was more overwhelming than India had anticipated. He had a smattering of dark stubble across his chin, and a heavy lower lip that made her unconsciously reach out her tongue and touch it to her own. His powerfully male presence, like a heady rush, was intensified only by the ice blue of his eyes, framed with lashes that on anybody else would have appeared effeminate, but gave Duke Robert Cooper the appearance of a wild animal shrewdly surveying his hunting ground. India actually caught her heart speeding up an unprecedented amount and willed her pulse not to jump out through her skin. The way he was looking at her was unnerving, or would have been had her nerves been just a tad less steely.
“I'm afraid I don't have a clever retort to that, seeing as Lord and Lady Davenport are among the throng below,” she told him.
He smiled, and it creased his face delightfully. Lord, but she saw it now, or at least a glimmer of what it was that had caused the stir in the slew of ladies down below. “You are a Davenport, then?”
“An Augustina, more like.”
Recognition flickered in his face, and for a moment, India thought she had miscalculated and made a terrible mistake. “Your grandfather was a stock share holder in the East India Company,” he said, and India breathed a sigh of relief.
“Yes,” she replied, now watching him carefully for any signs that the scandal associated with her mother's name would put the same cat-got-the-cream expression on his face that it did on so many of the sons she had been introduced to today. He was scanning her face and body in a way that made her feel as though her name was of little consequence to him. His gaze lingered on her mouth and on the tendrils of hair that were managing to escape her careful upsweep to linger delicately along the long line of her neck. She examined him in kind, noting the faint lines around his eyes, a precursor to what he would look like in just ten years, and decided right there and then that she liked it. He was broad around the shoulders and through his coat, she could tell that he had the kind of muscles that were built not from the light horse work that most of the gentry appeared to delight in, but from hard, heavy labor; she imagined he had spent some time in the tea fields himself, and predicted that she would be exactly correct.
“You stand out from them, you know,” he told her, and a note of fear spiked the excitement she felt around him. What did he know? And did he much care?
“I am a lady, just like the rest,” she told Robert Cooper, turning away from him and grasping the rail in her hands, the skin stretching smooth over her knuckles. She felt him take a step towards her, the heat of his body radiating onto her back. His hands settled gently on her upper arms, and India Augustina Davenport forgot how to breathe. What was he thinking, doing this in a spot where they could so easily be seen? What disrespect for a man to approach a lady in this manner, to take such liberties. She stepped forward to break free of his grasp, but he held her tightly.
“Unhand me,” she hissed, trying to wrest away, but he leaned over so that his warm breath fell onto her ear.
“You are far lovelier, far smarter, and far more a woman than any of those satin-covered sticks and prigs below,” he whispered, and turned her so that she faced him. His light eyes pierced into her until she saw herself the way that he did, and the sight was enough to send adrenaline to the very tips of her fingers and toes. He brought her slim, muscled frame closer to him until she felt, for the first time in her life, at the mercy of a real man. And she liked it.
“I am a lady. How dare you treat me like this?” she asked, only a slightly enraged that he was allowing himself such liberties. In truth, this was fodder to her sense of adventure, which was gaining gradual ground because who else but a real man would allow himself to hold her in so intimate a way in such a public setting? And yet, she felt she still had a choice; Robert Cooper had quite a way about him, indeed.
“Because you are unlike any lady I have ever seen before. You can never be doe-eyed because you are far too sharp; your eyes, even without their unusual color, show that you see everything about you through a critical lens, which is far more than I can say for the others. They are girls. You are a woman.”
And he lowered his mouth onto hers.
It took India a few seconds to react. She did it only because she did not like that Robert Cooper dulled her reaction time, for she was lost, for that minuscule slice of time in how soft his lips were, how hard his chest against hers, and how he tasted like the last breath of air before the door closes on a rainy day. She wanted to tilt her head onto him, close her hands around the curl of his biceps, and have him sweep her off her feet, but there was no way she was going to allow this near stranger to make a public spectacle of her at the home of the only grandparents who still cared about her social image. And so India Augustina wrenched herself away from Robert Cooper, pushed him back, and slapped him across the face.
“You are never to touch me in that way again. I am a lady through and through, and will not be treated as less than such.”
He seemed to almost savor the slap, rubbing his jaw, the tiny glint of fire in his eyes dangerous and seductive. “I thought I treated you far better than any lady, India.”
She paused in her grand exit to look back. But instead of turning into a pillar of salt, Robert Cooper lounged in the small awning like a small lion pleased with the booty brought home from the hunt. “And how do you figure that, Duke Cooper?” asked India primly, straightening her gown so that it fell about her without a wrinkle. “You approach me without a formal introduction, you proceed to paw at me like an animal—”
“Give me more credit than that, Lady Augustina, I hardly pawed at you. I touched you in a way that you very much enjoyed,” replied Robert Cooper coolly, taking a step forward so that India was forced to look into those incredible eyes again. She shook off the feeling he gave her and straightened her shoulders.
“Goodbye, Duke Cooper,” she replied calmly, and sauntered away, this time without a backwards glance.
Robert Cooper stared off after India Augustina Davenport and smiled.
* * *
India lit the candles in her room one by one until the entire bedroom was aglow with tiny lights. It transformed her room into an entirely different hemisphere of the world. India's ama had long since decorated her room with the ethnic silks she had brought over from Assam. The gentle glow of the candlelight brought to life the burgundy and gold of the various fabrics, making the entire room appear as a giant, pulsing womb.