Scandal in the Night (35 page)

She had been numb with relief, and frightened still, too. Unsure of where Birkstead might be. If he was still looking for them.

“More people came, their dark silhouettes dancing in front of the orange glow. Troops from the barracks. Servants, and people from the cantonment.” But they left them alone and did not intrude upon their silence as the children clustered around her. She couldn’t remember how long they had stood there, a tiny island of orphans.

And that was when it had hit her—now all of them were orphans. She was the only family they had left.

And then she had heard it. The whisperings. The denunciation.

“People started talking. I heard them say, ‘I saw him myself. They found him in the garden. Miss Rowan, he said. Shot him. Shot them all, is what he said. He said Miss Rowan shot him.’ And I did not wait to hear any more.”

Nor did she speak. It would not matter what she said, or how she defended herself. Birkstead’s words were only a start. She had seen the living malice in his eyes enough times to understand the nature of his character, and the words he had shouted at Alice still echoed in her ears.

He was as clever and ruthless as a jackal. He had told her himself. She would need friends. And she had only one. She turned to look at Thomas Jellicoe, at the promise in his level green gaze. “So I went to you. Only you weren’t there. It seems logical now, that you weren’t, but then, I could barely breathe, let alone think.” She let the thought trail away. She wanted to be done with regret.

“No,” Thomas said. “I was there, at the fire, looking for you. Beating Birkstead into a pulp.”

“Did you? Thank you.”

“No. Don’t thank me. I should never have done it. If I hadn’t, he might have talked. He might have told me where you were, and I might have—”

“You might have died looking,” she finished for him. “If you had gone back in then, I doubt you would have made it out. We barely did.” Her lungs had ached for a month, and she had not been able to draw breath for days without raspy pain scratching down her throat. She had barely been able to speak. None of them had. Catriona had never heard Alice speak again.

Lady Jeffrey drew Catriona into a brief embrace. “My dear Miss Cates—Miss Rowan, I should say. But the name is no matter—what matters is that you did the right thing. You got the children out, and made sure that they were safe, and now you are safe here with us. You may be assured of that.”

Lord Jeffrey was not so easy. “The child, this Alice, can corroborate everything you have said?”

“Yes. But the duchess—Lord Summers’s mother, the Duchess of Westing—said she would never let that happen.”

Not that the imperious old woman hadn’t been pleased by Catriona.

“I thank you for returning my grandchildren,” the duchess had said. “We are most appreciative. And we are prepared to reward you suitably. And handsomely. On one condition.”

“Anything, Your Grace.” Catriona had been ready to do anything—anything for those children who were her only family.

“That you never, ever divulge what you have just told me to another living soul. Not to anyone. Not even to the authorities. Ever. I will help you. I will help you disappear, and become a new person. I will give you money. But I will not let this sordid story come out. And if it does, I will know where it came from, Miss Rowan. I will know whom to blame. And blame I will. I will give credence to their accusations. I will say that you confessed your crimes to me. I will feed you to the wolves. Or I will help you. If you keep quiet.”

It had been so painful a blow Catriona felt as though she, too, had been shot. And the searing pain was still there, buried deep beneath layers of Miss Anne Cates’s calm, caring control. An ache that grew the longer she tried to push it aside.

But she had said she would do anything for them, and so she had kept quiet. She had disappeared. But Thomas Jellicoe, who was also Tanvir Singh, had found her. And not only he, but Birkstead as well.

“My dear Miss Rowan,” Lady Jeffrey chastised carefully. “Not even a duchess can be above the law.”

“I hope you will forgive me, my lady, but that is not my experience of the world. The dowager Duchess of Westing is a cousin to the king, and with abundant money and power, may do as she pleases. And
I
must do only as she pleases.”

Thomas seemed to understand. “And it pleased the dowager to let the world believe that a crazed, nobody of a relation of her son’s wife killed Lord Summers, rather than face the cold truth that Lady Summers killed her husband, and that her lover then killed her?”

Catriona nodded, but something that had to be relief—the relief of finally being understood, of finally, finally admitting the truth—spread like warmth through her. “Yes. And she was right. Because as long as that story is told, Alice is safe.”

Lord Jeffrey drew back in indignation. “This is a country of law, and no one, not even her grace of Westing, may put herself above it, nor require others to do so.”

Thomas was slightly more to the point. “Catriona, did she ask you to formally take the blame? Did you sign anything?”

“No. I just agreed to maintain the assumption.”

“And she required you to do that how?”

“To keep quiet. Never repeat my story. Never ask Alice to repeat her story. Not try to clear my name. Her grace was the one who suggested I take another identity. She said a new name would serve me well. Even better than the last.” The idea had appealed to Catriona at the time. She had still harbored some faint faith in the power of starting anew. “The duchess gave me money and a new name. And references. She was the one who recommended me to Lady Grimoy in Paris.”

“Paris?” Thomas’s deep green eyes lit up in revelation. “Of course. The letters. When you were at school there.”

“Letters?” Catriona didn’t realize he had known she had been at school in Paris—but then anyone who had been at Colonel Balfour’s party that night might have heard—and she had never spoken of the letters. But he was canny, this Thomas Jellicoe. He had stolen secrets across one half of the Punjab and down the other side of Hind, and he was looking at her now with those penetrating green eyes as if he had secrets yet to tell.

“I kept them, your letters. The ones you left behind in your satchel when you ran off to save the day, or rather the night. And you did save them that night, Cat. You did. And you made your way to Paris, to your convent school, to take shelter there. Clever girl. Very clever.” Something that might be admiration was warming his voice, and he was smiling at her the way he used to in India, that smile that crinkled up the corners of his green eyes, and curved that wide, sly scimitar of a smile across his handsome face.

She had been clever. She had aimed at Paris and the sanctuary of that convent from the moment she had understood that she was on her own—on her own, and in charge of four orphaned, grieving children.

She had thought about Paris, about the tree-lined streets and the shady parks, as she sat huddled in the curtained oxcart trundling through the night toward the western desert. She had diverted her cousins with stories of the sights, of Les Invalides and the beautiful soaring architecture—triumphal arches and elegant homes. She had medicated them with the promise of a return of ease and grace while they had crossed the wide, empty Thar Desert, following the caravans moving to the west, toward Persia and Arabia, across mountains and plains. She had enchanted them with descriptions of the delicate fashions—the silly sleeves and the ridiculous bonnets—as they made their way across the Arabian Sea. She had conjured the smells of coffee and bread arising out of the bleakest of eastern dawns.

She had shut her mind to the pungent earthy aromas of marigolds and curry. She had banished all thought of bright silks and jeweled saris. She had closed her mind to everything of India, and set her sights resolutely west.

“I was to stay in France, taking governessing positions from families traveling or living there. But Lady Grimoy was adamant that I come back to England with them, and help see her daughter Augusta Grimoy out. And then I came to you.” She turned to Lady Jeffrey. “It seemed as if it would not matter where I was, or who I was, as long as I should not have any contact with my cousins.”

“She cut you off from them, just like that? After all you had done?”

“Yes. I will admit it was a wrench.” God, it had been more than a wrench. Months and months of traveling together, often in disguise, learning to lie to fend off attention, carefully counting out the money the begum, had given her, never knowing if anyone was on their tail. Remembering over and over again what had happened.

Alice had had terrible nightmares. Terrible.

And then that day, in Paris, when she had met with the dowager duchess for so long in the cool quiet of the cloister, she had come back to her room to find they were gone—just gone. The children had been removed to the duchess’s hotel, and forbidden to her.

Catriona had been numb with the pain.

It was for the best, her grace had said. Best for the children and their safety. Best for Catriona to start her new life. And indeed, Lady Grimoy had sent for her within the hour. So Catriona went. She was too devastated to do otherwise.

“Her grace said if I ever spoke up about what had happened, then she would tell them the opposite—that I had confessed to her, and thrown myself upon her mercy, which she had granted for the children’s sake, since I had done her the service of bringing them to her.”

“She can’t do that, Miss Rowan.” Lord Jeffrey was firm in his conviction. “Or at least she ought not to. But if she’s stubborn enough to perjure herself in a court of law, then so be it. A decent prosecutor—and we will find an excellent prosecutor, Miss Rowan. Most excellent. Superior. A decent prosecutor will have the truth out of this Alice—she is how old now, Miss Rowan?”

“No, no,” she protested. “She will be only ten years old. But please, I promised. She’s been through too much.”

“Catriona.” Thomas took her hands. “Birkstead has done murder. And has attempted to murder you here. He has to be stopped. For Alice’s sake as well as yours.”

“But he doesn’t know about her. Not for sure. He suspected, but that was why I was willing to take the blame, so he wouldn’t know about her.”

“Catriona.” Thomas shook his head. He wouldn’t be convinced. “The thing that matters is that he has to be stopped.”

“But how? He’s out there somewhere, waiting, taking his potshots as he wills.”

“My dear, darling girl.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “It’s very simple, really. I’m going to go after him, and track him down, and kill him.”

Chapter Twenty

Thomas felt a sort of calmness, a swift surety, a confirmation that his convictions were correct. With that calm came the knowledge that he wanted nothing more than to do what Lieutenant Birkstead had once accused him of—slit the bastard’s throat from ear to ear. But he was no longer Tanvir Singh, carrying a lethal curved blade and a long, horseman’s pistol in his belt. And while he had once been a
sawar
and a spy, he had never been an assassin.

But he was both Tanvir Singh and the Honorable Thomas Jellicoe, son of the Earl Sanderson. He would have to be as careful and cunning as a panther to take on the jackal. But make no mistake—he was going to avenge this very great wrong to the woman he loved in the most basic and most elemental way possible.

Cat was just as vehement in her insistence. “No. No more killing.”

“Yes, Thomas. Surely there has been enough.” Cassandra’s hand rose to her mouth to cover her shock at the chilling bluntness of his assertion. “We must trust the law will do its work.”

Catriona looked at his sister-in-law the viscountess with eyes that were a hundred years old. Eyes that were full of a kind of desperate envy and pity, all at the same time. “Unfortunately, my lady, the law works most efficiently to help those in power, not right wrongs, or help the oppressed.”

“I refuse to believe that, Miss Rowan,” James stated flatly. “I am the magistrate in this district. I am the law, and
I
am determined to help you.”

“Yes,” Cassandra agreed. “You may rest your trust in Lord Jeffrey. He will not let you suffer. Nor your cousin Alice. Especially Alice. But oh, I cannot help but wish you had faced these outrageous accusations in India. Then it might never have come to this. I am sure you might have trusted Thomas to help you.”

Catriona shook her head. “Thomas was not there, my lady,” was all she said. “And Alice … was not well. She was entirely transfixed with terror. She couldn’t sleep and she wouldn’t be alone—she clung to me as if she were in constant fear of being taken back—and I didn’t think she should have to face him. I knew how it would be if it came to a trial. If I put Alice up on a stand as a witness with Birkstead looking at her like the slavering, sinister jackal he was. He would have intimidated her. It would have been his word against hers, if indeed she could even speak. And my word against his. And so I ran. We all ran. I could not leave Alice to be worked over by the likes of Birkstead or his un-judicial committee.”

“The begum helped you?” Thomas prompted. He wanted every piece of missing information. He wanted to make sure he understood each and every moment that she had spent between that awful night and now.

“Yes,” Cat said, though it was evident from the pale exhaustion in her face that she was growing weary with the telling. “We left that night—or maybe it was morning by then. I don’t remember. But we were gone within what seemed like a short time of our darkening the begum’s door. We bundled into an old, nondescript, closed oxcart and went west toward Jaisalmer, while the begum had Mina pack up her entire retinue to return east to the kingdom of Ranpur, where the company held no sway.”

“A diversion.” Thomas approved of the begum’s tactics. “And it worked beautifully. No one, not even Colonel Balfour, suspected. You went to the begum’s sister, I collect, at the fort at Jaisalmer? And from there across the desert?”

“Yes.” She wrapped her arms around her middle again, as if to hold herself together. “And he’s out there somewhere, watching us, coming and going as he pleases, waiting with his gun.”