Scandal in the Night (29 page)

“I will go nowhere, Uncle,” she insisted. “Truly. I have no wish to leave. For any reason.” She firmed her voice even more, and looked him in the eye to make sure he understood her intent. Her life with her cousins was perfect, just as it was.

But Lord Summers was blind to any other possibility but the one he had already envisioned. He could not be so easily dissuaded from his own intent. “Not even when you find out that a certain fellow has made his intentions known to me? Not even when you find that you are to be the happiest of women?”

She would get nowhere with Lord Summers by being subtle. “I hope, Uncle, you do not refer to Lieutenant Birkstead.”

“Aha! But I do.” And then Lord Summers finally read her distress in her expression. “But what do you mean? Do you mean you do not welcome his suit?” Surprise made his face florid. “He is the most sought-after officer in the entire residency.”

Then the entire residency was blind. As blind as poor Lord Summers. But she could not become one of them. She would not join them in their willful self-deception.

“I have no doubt of that, sir.” Catriona measured out her worlds in an effort to be as kind and as politic as possible. “But I fear we should not suit.”

He sat back in his chair, as if her antipathy to Birkstead were unfathomable, and he could not think of any reason to believe her. Then his face cleared when he hit upon his answer. “Ah. You think that you are not good enough for him. My dear child, let me assure you—”

“No, sir.” She could not let him go on in this vein. Not good enough? Her new uncle was a generous, jovial man, but he knew her so little, really. He could not be any more mistaken in his conjecture of her opinions. If only her uncle could see past class and caste and titles. “Please understand. There is no circumstance, of birth or fortune, his or mine, that would change my mind. Please believe me when I tell you, we are entirely unsuited.”

“No, no. Not at all. You will suit, for he is handsome and talented, and you are rich.”

“My lord?”

Lord Summers laughed and patted the hand he still held captive within his own. “It is done, Catriona, for I have spent the day settling a fortune of your own upon you. You must know you are like a daughter to me. And all the more precious because you are not. No one could have done more for your cousins. No one could have loved them better.”

“My Lord Summers.” His extraordinary kindness made heat build in her throat. “You make too much of it. I love them for themselves, and not because I expect recompense for it.”

“You shall have it, nonetheless. I can do no less.”

Catriona could not refuse such generosity. She did not want to refuse. Such money would give her independence at the very least, and let her marry where she chose—far, far away from the hidebound, narrow cantonment, and the Lieutenant Birksteads of the world. Into a whole other world, perhaps. Money of her own would be a godsend.

Gratitude tightened her throat, and made it hard to speak. “You are truly generous, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. But I also know, and hope you will believe me when I tell you, that Lieutenant Birkstead and I will not suit. We will
never
suit.”

He sat back to consider her. “Have you given this serious consideration?”

“I have, sir. I have.” She had to make him understand. She had to. “I have tried to consider his suit, but he is not a man I can either love or respect.” Her heart was thudding at the hollow of her throat, pushing the words she didn’t want to say upward toward her mouth. It took everything she had, every ounce of self-restraint and tact, to make her uncle understand, and at the same time not reveal too much.

But he would not allow her the luxury of easy evasion. He frowned at her, as if he was afraid she had taken leave of her senses, or was suffering from some missish overabundance of modesty. “Will you not at least tell me why you feel you should not suit?”

She tried to choose her words carefully, but every piece of truth was a potential disaster. “He has a reputation as … a rake, a ladies’ man, only not with ladi—”

“My dear.” Lord Summers interrupted her with another easy, unconcerned smile. “It is only natural that he should be something of a swain. He is, after all, a handsome man, and he is charming. You should not put too much stead into rumors.”

She did not know how else to make him understand. “I would hope that you would know me better than to think that I would believe idle rumor, sir. What I know of the lieutenant, I have observed firsthand, without resort to rumor or innuendo.” She took a breath and forged ahead. “I have seen him with married ladies of this cantonment.”

“The lieutenant is a great favorite of all the ladies, of course.”

Catriona wanted to be kind and circumspect. But her frustration, and her anger for her uncle, made her imprudent. “Sir, I have seen him kissing married ladies of this cantonment with carnal intent, and I have heard him making assignations with married ladies.”

“Have you really?”

“Yes. He is neither discreet nor prudent. If I, who do not care much for socializing, have seen evidence of his dalliances, it is highly likely that others have gained knowledge of his indiscretions as easily as I have.” Catriona wasn’t sure if he was truly astonished, or he simply didn’t believe her. But she could not reveal the whole truth without making a complete and utter hash of it. “Please. Don’t make me say any more. Please believe me, and let the matter rest.”

Lord Summers’s eyebrows rode high across his face for a long moment before he spoke. “If it is as you say, and perhaps he had not always behaved so well as he ought in the past, we must assume that he is a changed man. He has declared himself smitten with you. Smitten, my dear. He declares he will have no other, and I believe him.”

“Why? Why do you believe him?”

“Why should I not? The lieutenant is an intelligent, hardworking young man. An excellent officer. He looks after the cares of this cantonment as if they were his own.”

Of course he did, the jackal. There was profit in such vigilance. And the bloody man had clearly spent more time making up to Lord Summers than he had to her. And with much better effect, for Lord Summers believed Birkstead, where she did not. “The lieutenant has never spoken of his finer feelings to
me,
sir, if indeed he has
finer
feelings. For my part, I am sure such effusions are contrived, for Lieutenant Birkstead can be in no doubt of my low opinion of him.”

“You have spoken to him?”

“On almost every occasion when we have met. Lieutenant Birkstead is well aware of my feelings toward him, sir. He can be in no doubt.”

“But he spoke to me of his wishes this very afternoon. He was effusive in his hopes.”

It ought to be heartening, that her uncle was such a trusting, well-intentioned man, but his obtuseness regarding the lieutenant was more than wearying. “And may I ask, sir, if the lieutenant is aware of the amount of money you had planned to settle upon me?”

“Of course, for why would I not tell him? I encouraged his suit. You know I have worked to throw you together.”

“I thank you for your efforts, sir. Truly I do. No father could have done more. But do you not see that his persistence in the face of rejection might be fueled more by ambition for your money, than by any love or affection or even respect for me?”

Lord Summers’s blank face showed that he had indeed
not
thought such a thing, at all. And that he was perhaps put out at Catriona for suggesting it. Indeed he was displeased—every inch of his face was growing taut and hard. “You have quite made up your mind, have you not?”

“I’m afraid I have, sir. I thank you for your care and generosity. I just don’t think Lieutenant Birkstead is as worthy of your generosity as you have thought him.”

“Yes, perhaps. Perhaps not.” Her uncle-in-law was pensive and unhappy with her—his brow was still beetled with concern and his mouth was turned down in an unhappy moue. He stabbed out his cigar. “Just promise me you will think more on it before you dismiss him out of hand. Promise me that you will give him a chance to prove himself worthy of you.”

There was no chance. There had not been since the moment she had seen the dratted man in Aunt Lettice’s greedy arms. But she had pained her uncle enough for one evening. It was enough that she had spoken. It would take time for Lord Summers to come around to her way of thinking. She had to trust that he would, in time, observe Birkstead, and see for himself.

But it seemed prudent, at that moment, to give in. “I promise, sir.”

It would not be her last lie. In fact, it proved to be the first of many, many more.

The next lie flew out of her mouth not more than a few minutes later.

Because he must have been there, Birkstead, outside on the veranda, listening to her conversation with her uncle. And he did have a servant at the residency who was in his pay, because within minutes of her conversation with her uncle, the lieutenant was back at her, full of well-honed threat.

She had gone into the central courtyard at the back half of the house, where there was a tiny garden, to settle herself. To think for the first time about the future, about what she
did
want, and if, after she had disappointed him, her uncle-in-law would prove true about the settlement, how she might use that money to further her goals. She had no desire to go back to Scotland, but she knew she would have to make a home of her own somehow, somewhere. Perhaps here in India, or farther north, in the kingdom of the Punjab or Kashmir, beyond British influence or reach. Tanvir Singh would advise her on where she might go.

And then the jackal was suddenly there, jarring her out of her thoughts of travels, and caravans, and horse traders, materializing out of the dark like a phantom, silent and menacing.

“And there she is.” Birkstead stepped across her path again, smiling at her in the focused, self-possessed way of a snake hunting its prey. “My elegant, contained little betrothed.”

Catriona stopped short of running into him, and fought to keep her composure over the inelegant, uncontained pounding of her pulse in her throat. She should have anticipated him. She should have remembered his talk of casually bribing servants.

She let her resentment push her toward anger but she kept her voice low, conscious of being overheard. “I am not your betrothed, Lieutenant. Nor will I ever agree to be. You know that.”

He smiled, and shook his head as if it were she who were particularly obtuse, before he leaned in closer to whisper his threat. “It’s funny the things one knows. About you, for example.”

She would not take his lethal bait. “You know I don’t like you.”

“True. Very true. And at this moment, I
don’t
especially like you. But your new fortune, on the other hand, remains most endearing.”

His offhand, open contempt steeled her spine. “Ah. Sarcasm. So refreshing. I’m sure my uncle will be interested to hear of it.” She would have turned, and gone back the way she had come, but she didn’t like to turn her back on him—he still had that glint of predatory pleasure shining from the dark depths of his eyes—so she backed toward the stairs leading out of the courtyard.

“Perhaps. But I rather think your uncle won’t hear of our little exchange of sarcasm. In fact, I’m sure of it.”

And he was very sure. He was almost smug with certainty. Catriona swallowed the acid tang of apprehension rising in her throat and waited.

He didn’t keep her in suspense—he was too happy, too smug to keep his peace for long. “Yes, you will be surprised by all I know about you. You left Scotland rather precipitously, did you not?”

The tight knot in her throat moved lower into her chest where it sat like a hot coal, burning away the last traces of her confidence. She had to wet her dry lips and throat to speak. “I left when my parents died, and I had no remaining family.” The growing heat within scorched her voice.

His smile slid up one side of his face. He really was a jackal of a man. “But that’s not exactly true, is it?”

“No,” she countered with desperate determination. “It is
exactly
true.” Her throat was so dry it was a wonder her voice had not cracked in two.

He smiled with the amoral satisfaction of a hunter who knows it has trapped its prey. “That’s not what they’re whispering around Glasgow.”

The hot, choking heat seared throughout her chest, and out into her arms before it burned its way down into her belly. An image rose unbidden to the surface of her mind—her father at his end, quietly and coldly dead in the damp green grass, his eyes looking up at the empty heavens as the fading echo of the pistol shot moaned through the hills above the Avon water.

But Birkstead was not done toying with her. “I have a report, you know. A report that I instigated, on Lord Summers’s behalf.” There was the predatory, lupine smile again. “You didn’t think that an unknown girl could just show up, from out of the blue, and impose herself upon the resident commissioner without any notice, did you?” He shook his head at her inferred foolishness. “Oh, no. I decided to find out what I could. And I found out something very interesting.”

She backed away from him. She couldn’t help herself. The animal instinct to run reasserted itself with a blind fury. Birkstead was a living, breathing, lethal threat, and no matter how she told herself that he could not possibly know what had happened in Scotland, her courage could not withstand the assault without moving a prudent few feet backward.

She tried to steel her spine. “There is nothing interesting to find. My family died of typhus.” That at least was partially true. Her mother and brother and sister had all been gone within the span of a fortnight. As had others—cousins and strangers alike. “Half of Glasgow died that fall. At least, half the people in the poorer neighborhoods did. You may accuse me of being low, of taking advantage. It is true, I
am
poor and obscure. I have only one relation in the world who is not either of those things, and he is my uncle-in-law. And all this I told him myself when I arrived in Saharanpur.”