Rules of Surrender (35 page)

Today he was grimly aware of his faults. “Mother, while I always knew you could run the business, to leave you to bear the burden for so many years was not right.”

“But I like running the business. Your father taught me so much, and I enjoy putting his lessons to use.” She sounded faintly pleading. “Oh, dear, I never thought you would take this embezzlement so seriously.”

He suspected they were talking at cross-purposes again, but he didn’t have time to question her about her misgivings. Not when they were entering her apartments. At last he could talk to the one woman he knew would understand about the one woman he did
not
understand. Hands on his hips, he said, “She isn’t working out the way I’d planned.”

Adorna’s brow knitted. “Who, dear?”

“My wife, of course.”

Adorna sank down on her sofa and stared at him.

“She has ceased her senseless defiance. She has admitted my wisdom in bringing about our marriage. She thanks me for my gifts of clothing and jewelry. Yet”— he could scarcely stand to admit this—“yet she is not happy.” He paced across to the window, then paced back. “Mother, why is she not happy?”

“Some wives”—Adorna seemed to carefully pick her words—“don’t find pleasure in the marital bed. Is Charlotte one such woman?”

He had no time for this English delicacy about perfectly natural functions. “Barakah, my desert father, taught me that if a wife does not find pleasure in the marital bed, it is the husband’s duty to discover what will pleasure her.”

“The old blackguard was right about that, at least.”

“Charlotte and I find much gratification in each other. She brings me ecstasy, and I do the same for her. Many times. Often. I bring her to the peak often because…”

Adorna was clearly fascinated. “Because?”

“At night, when she thinks I am asleep, she weeps.”

Adorna’s face fell.

He gritted his teeth, then told it all. “This morning, after the sun rose and I had brought her much bliss, she turned her back to me and cried.”

Adorna shook her head. “Oh, Wynter.”

“My appeals for elucidation proved fruitless. She will not talk to me.”

“Never?”

“Not as she used to. Even when I eat with my fingers, she says nothing!” That was the worst—he’d performed the most heinously improper act of which he could think, and Charlotte hadn’t reprimanded him! “She said she loved me.”

“Yes…” Adorna appeared to be deep in thought.

“A woman is fulfilled when she loves a man.”

Adorna choked.

“So why is she not happy?”

Leaning back into the corner of her sofa, Adorna asked in a sarcastic tone, “I don’t know, Wynter, why isn’t she?”

“Because she wants me to love her!” He paced across the room.

“Charlotte is a very loveable woman,” Adorna pointed out.

“A real man does not love a woman. So my desert father Barakah taught me.”

“Wynter!” Standing, his mother snapped out his name as if he were six years old and embroiled in a fistfight. “You tell me that this Barakah, this desert father of yours, said a
real
man does not love his wife. Do you remember your
own
father at all?”

Her vehemence startled him. “Yes, of course. I honor his memory.”

She stood there, staring at him, waiting as if he were supposed to know something he didn’t.

At last she made a sound of disgust. “Could you be any more stupid?” Placing her hand to her forehead, she said, “I don’t understand what you want from me. Do you want me to tell you how to make Charlotte happy?”

His mother had to know. She had to, for where else could he turn? “Well… yes.”

“It seems to me Charlotte has already told you how to make her happy, but in case you need to hear it again”—she gestured—“perhaps you should ask her.”

Charlotte stood framed in the doorway. She wore one of the gowns he had bought her, a simple white cotton, and even with the mark of Leila’s sole upon it, she looked most ravishing. Her hair was down, as he preferred, and was caught back in a clip of blue diamonds set in platinum. She looked like a sweet and gentle angel. An angel who was glaring at him.

He didn’t know why, but she was angry with him.

Anger was better than that awful resignation and sadness.

“I came looking for you to tell you how concerned I was about Leila,” she said. “And I find you discussing me with your
mother?”

He looked to Adorna for guidance, but she had disappeared. “I did not know what to do about you.”

“About
me? You didn’t know what to do
about
me? Am I a child to be handled?”

“Not a child, no. But certainly a woman who doesn’t know what she wants.”

Her fists balled at her side. “I don’t know what I want? I am not the one who had to come to my mother for advice.”

He blinked in amazement. “Coming to my mother was the logical course to take. Our union is not proceeding as I had foreseen.”

Her skirts rustled as she strode into the room. “It is, too.”

“This is an untruth. You are not happy as you should be.”

“Why would I be happy?” Coming to him, she placed her hands on his arms and looked up at him earnestly. “My life is just what I feared it would be. At least before, I was a governess. I worked for my keep. My labor had worth. Now I need do nothing. I
am
nothing. I am a possession to be tended as long as I give pleasure.”

“A wife is more than a possession.”

“Like a horse is more than a possession?” She must have seen the answer in his face, for she flung out her hands. “I’m not a horse. I’m not a dog. I’m a human being and I want to be valued for that. I want to be…”

Her eyes must have been filling up with tears again, for she turned away. Had he ever seen her cry before their wedding? No. And since then she had not stopped. Not to control him, as Barakah had warned him some women did, but out of some deep-held pain.

Barakah would have told him that a woman’s pain was a trivial matter, and she should be left alone to heal. But something in Wynter demanded that he help with the burden of Charlotte’s pain. If he didn’t, he thought she might bear it forever. He repeated, “You want to be… loved?”

Leaning her shoulder against the wall, she groped for her handkerchief. “He comprehends!”

“But it is enough that you love me.”

She blew her nose. “Apparently not.”

He experienced confusion. He did not like confusion. He liked life to proceed as it should according to the laws and traditions set down by the men who were his elders. “A real man does not—”

She swung on him like an avenging goddess. “I’ll tell you what you can do. You real men can just go to—”

“Papa!” Robbie appeared in the doorway, eyes wide and horrified, holding a piece of paper. “Papa, Leila’s run away.”

CHAPTER 32

Charlotte snatched the note and in despair read the childish scrawl.

“Run away?” Wynter stared at Robbie. “Run away where?”

Hoarsely, Charlotte said, “Home. She says she’s gone home.”

She had never seen Wynter turn pale, but he paled now. “To El Bahar.” He stood as if turned to stone, then seized Charlotte’s hand. “You were going to speak to me about Leila.”

“Yes. Yes.” She scrambled to collect her thoughts. “As we got busy preparing for the Sereminian reception, I’ve grown worried about her. I suspect she feels neglected. She’s cheerful, then ill-natured—”

“Really crabby,” Robbie interjected.

“Yes,” Charlotte agreed. “I don’t think she’s sleeping well, and while she was always a challenge, she just isn’t her usual exuberant self.”

Wynter nodded curtly. “Robbie, would she try to run away to El Bahar?”

“Yes. She’s so dumb she might not remember how far it is. She’d try to go back.” Robbie grimaced as if trying to contain tears. “She hasn’t been happy about me playing with my friends. This is my fault.”

“You’re not responsible, son, I am.” Wynter placed a hand on Robbie’s shoulder and squeezed. “Very well. Robbie, go to the stables and speak to Fletcher. See if Leila has been there. Charlotte, send someone to the hostelry and see if she’s boarded the coach.” His face took on a grim cast. “I’ll go to London and search the docks.”

“No, you won’t.” Charlotte twirled and strode out the door. “At least… not alone.”

Wynter finished talking to the sea captain he had collared, and realized with a start that Charlotte had vanished from his side.

It was a pitch-dark night on the London docks, his wife and his daughter had both disappeared and he could have howled from a fear that ate at his guts. He was going to lose Leila, or Charlotte, or both of them, and this time he couldn’t run far enough to cover the pain. This crisis was nothing like his father’s death. This time Wynter was an adult, a man responsible for the well-being of his family, and he was failing in every way.

How was this possible? He had lived by the truths as he understood them, taking responsibility, behaving honorably, acting always in an upright manner. What had gone wrong?

In the darkness, he appealed to the sheikh who had guided him into manhood and taught him his hunting skills. “Barakah, please help me find them.”

He took a few steps along the wall of a tavern, using every sense to locate his wife. She couldn’t have gone far. She’d just been here.

Then he heard her. Charlotte’s voice, asking, “If you see a girl walking alone, will you let me know?”

Wynter leaned against the tavern wall, which was damp from the fog and permeated with the stench of old ale, and passed a shaking hand over his forehead.

“Aye, miss, but… lots o‘ girls walkin’ alone down ‘ere, miss, an’ none o‘ ’em fer a good reason.”

Wynter followed the voices down a fetid alleyway, taking care to make no noise.

“I know, but this girl is special,” Charlotte said urgently. “This is my daughter.”

Wynter clamped his hands on her shoulders. “What are you doing, Charlotte?”

The prostitute shrieked at his sudden appearance and stumbled into a pile of rubbish.

Charlotte leaned back as if she never had a doubt who stood behind her.

He slid one arm around her, feeling the firm combination of skin and muscle that was Charlotte. He needed this. He needed her; worried as he was about Leila, dismayed as he was at having his wife along on his hunt, still he took comfort in her presence. She gave him hope.

Barakah would be amazed at her strength.

“This young lady is out in this alley all night long.” Charlotte sounded unruffled, as if she regularly spoke to prostitutes in the lowest dive in London. “She has kindly consented to watch for Leila.”

Charlotte had a good idea, Wynter admitted. Alert the prostitutes to watch for Leila. But he didn’t think he could survive very many more of Charlotte’s good ideas. Not if they involved her disappearing into the night.

“I’ll pay you well,” he told the prostitute. He could scarcely see her in the spill of the tavern light behind him, and he knew he was nothing more than a hulking brute to her. But she saw the gleam of his coin as he extended it, and at once it disappeared up her sleeve. “There’s more where that came from if you see her. Come to the Ruskin Shipping Company. We’ll be there.”

“No.” Charlotte grabbed his arm. “We can’t stop looking now.”

“The sun set two hours ago. The fog’s thickening, and we’re just as likely to get our throats cut as find Leila.”
And I need to stash you somewhere safe.
But he didn’t say that. She had insisted on coming to London. She would resist any attempt to search without her. And in truth, hunting now was foolish for just the reasons he listed, even for him. He herded Charlotte toward the street. “We need to rest so we can search again in the morning.”

“What if Leila’s out here alone?” Charlotte asked in a low voice.

“At the age of five, she survived a raid on our camp.” He reminded himself of that often. “She is wary and wily, and if she is hunkered down somewhere, we could never find her anyway.” Charlotte didn’t know it, but he held his knife unsheathed in his right hand. “She might not even be out here. The girl they said took the London coach did not match her description.”

“Leila could have worn one of your mother’s wigs.”

“I know.” Of course he knew. Leila could do anything when she set her mind to it. “Grip my coattails,” he instructed. “I will lead us back to Ruskin Shipping.”

To the best of his ability, he kept to the deepest shadows, hearing the grunts of the working prostitutes, the snores of the drunks, the occasional whimper of a soul in distress. The thought of Leila out here ate at him. In the morning…

‘There are lights on in your building,“ Charlotte said. ”I thought everyone would have gone home by now.“

Wynter stared at the blank front of Ruskin Shipping. She was right. A candle flickered in Wynter’s personal second-story office.

Someone was in there. A thief? Or—he took a hard breath—an embezzler?

Had one good thing come of this debacle after all?

”Quietly,“ he warned Charlotte as he eased the door open. But her skirts rustled as she moved, a womanly sound he usually relished and which now could betray him. He led her through the darkened warehouse, with its wooden crates and spicy scents, to the bottom of the staircase. ”Stay here.“ Moving with the stealth of a desert warrior, he crept up toward the one lit office, knife in hand, his whole being focused on that criminal within.

Whoever he was, Wynter was going to kill him.

Halting, he took a breath to calm his murderous rage. Perhaps killing the embezzler would be disproportionate. But given his gnawing fear about Leila, his frustration with his failure to find the embezzler and Charlotte’s unreasonable behavior, bloodshed sounded quite desirable.

Hearing a board creak and a rustle on the dark stairs behind him, he swiveled, knifepoint out.

”Wynter,“ Charlotte whispered, a pale silhouette against the night. ”I just thought—would Leila have known to come here?“

The hand that held the knife shook as he sheathed it. ”I don’t know.“ Leila
had
been here on their way through London to Austinpark Manor. Perhaps his resourceful daughter had found her way to the safety of her family’s property.