Chapter One

London, 1856

Susannah was wearing the corset. From his vantage point, looking in her window from the balcony of his townhouse next door, Carlyle Jameson could see it and more. What a glorious woman.

She heaved a sigh and Carlyle almost stopped breathing. Still partly concealed by the camisole that she wore underneath it, her full breasts were nicely cupped and lifted high by the frilled top.

His gaze moved to the ribbon rosebuds sewn into the frill, which put him in mind of nipples he could not see. Carlyle had to adjust his trousers when Susannah toyed absently with one rosebud, waiting for Lakshmi, her Indian maid, to finish loosening her laces in back.

Susannah slipped a hand beneath the ribbed silk, rubbing her skin. “One can scarcely breathe in these things,” she said over her shoulder to the maid, “though this one is pretty.”

Carlyle would have to agree. The corset was dangerously pretty. Lakshmi had concealed a fortune in gems in it before all three of them had left India never to return. Susannah had no idea and he had only found out afterward.

The maid had hidden the thing among the clothes in Susannah’s trunks. Once in London, Lakshmi had confessed everything and shown the corset to Carlyle, whom she regarded as her protector. He had been in a way. But he had no idea what to do about the gems, and told her to put it back where it was.

Certainly he had never expected to see Susannah wearing it. Or any other corset. A few minutes ago, thinking she was at the theater, Carlyle had come out onto the balcony that overlooked the back gardens of their side‑by‑side houses and happened to glance that way.

The dangerous corset fit her perfectly. In fact, it was a marvel of its kind, a hybrid of British rigor and a very Indian love of ornament, made of pink silk. Each of the ribbon rosebuds had its own stem of seed pearls, further adorned with openwork leaves and fanciful tendrils and hundreds more seed pearls covered the corset’s numerous ribs‑applied by Lakshmi in hopes of interfering with a woman’s fine sense of touch. The padded ribs concealed rubies and sapphires, while the ribbon rosebuds hid diamonds from the mines of Golconda, six in all.

He wondered why Susannah had donned it tonight‑perhaps it was only a whim. Her maid could not very well refuse her.

Susannah plucked at a thread too fine for him to see. “Oh dear. A few of the pearls have come loose.”

The maid circled around her to look, clucking with distress.

“I shall fix it. You cannot sew by candlelight, Lakshmi.”

The maid begged to differ, apparently, murmuring something he couldn’t hear that made Susannah give in. “Oh, if you must. But wait until morning‑I insist. Perhaps the sun will appear tomorrow.”

Ah. He heard the sadness in her voice. The gray skies and cold, rainy weather of England oppressed her. That was to be expected for someone who had lived all her life until now in the sensual, enfolding heat of India.

He watched as Lakshmi came around her mistress to unhook the front of the corset and remove it. She folded the thing with some difficulty‑it was quite stiff‑and set it on the chest of drawers. Then she hovered nearby, not wanting to leave the room for reasons Carlyle could certainly understand.

He had to smile. Kind to a fault, Susannah was waving her maid away.

“That is all the help I need, Lakshmi. Thank you. You may go to bed.”

The Indian woman nodded and withdrew, casting one last glance at the corset. With her gone, Carlyle felt even more like a bounder for continuing to watch Susannah. He too glanced at the corset on the dresser, as if that gave him a reason.

Hah. You would trade all the gems in it‑no, all the gems in the world‑for a kiss from Susannah. One perfect kiss. But the gems are not yours and neither is she.

He looked back at her. Now clad in only a thin camisole from the waist up and billowing petticoats from the waist down, Susannah seated herself before a mirror mounted on a small table and began to unpin her hair. Down it came in waves of rich, dark brown that made Carlyle long to feel its heavy softness running through his fingers.

How delightful it would be to kiss the nape of her neck until her lips parted. Her eyes would close with dreamy pleasure…Carlyle chided himself again for thinking such things about her, innocent that she was.

Susannah picked up a brush and began to run it through her hair, her beautiful breasts moving with every stroke.

He was mesmerized‑and he was on fire with lust. Her rounded rump, evident even under several petticoats, shifted on the padded stool as she leaned forward, pouting at her reflection, idly brushing her hair back over her shoulders. The brown waves fell to her slender waist.

Susannah set down the brush and picked up a bottle of eau de cologne, squeezing its tasseled bulb to spray a fine mist over her bosom and neck. Her dampened camisole made her nipples stand out underneath it, as pink and tight as the ribbon rosebuds on her cast‑aside corset. She shivered, chilled by the draft from the open window behind her.

Carlyle would have walked through a brick wall at that moment to have her, to claim her body, to hear her whisper words of love in answer to his own…he shut his eyes to regain his equilibrium, breathing deeply.

He opened them. Susannah was reaching out through the open window to close the shutters. Thank God she did not see him, even though he was less than ten feet away. Lit from behind, her upper body was a curving silhouette beneath her camisole. With her hair tumbling around her face, her expression held a mysterious tenderness, as if she expected a lover to come to her that very night.

Then, reaching out with both hands, she pulled the shutters in. He heard her latch them, then close the window.

Carlyle sighed. He would have to be careful to make no sound when he went inside.

Susannah settled herself once more on the padded stool, rubbing her bare arms to warm them. The fragrance of the garden, even filtered through the sooty air of London, had brought to mind a night in India.

She and Carlyle Jameson had been waiting for the moon to rise in an open‑air pavilion of pierced stone, looking out over a reflecting pool. A palace musician began an evening raga, whose haunting melody reached its climax just as the moon appeared, casting silvery light over the water.

It had been a magical moment‑and she had almost thought then that Carlyle would kiss her. But, watched as they were by her old ayah a few yards away and a couple of miscellaneous aunties pretending not to notice a thing, he had only smiled.

She had been rather put out, although she could not say that Carlyle had refused her, since she hadn’t offered him anything. As she remembered it, she had been explaining the intricacies of the Indian musical scale…and then suddenly she’d thought about being kissed. By him.

She still wanted him to. But he seemed to want to marry her off to the highest bidder in London, something she was not at all sure she desired.

Growing up in a maharajah’s palace in Jaipur, Susannah had enjoyed a great deal of freedom, especially since her mother, a girl of eighteen when she had married Susannah’s father, had died so young. She’d had the benefit of an excellent, if somewhat improvisational education and the run of the maharajah’s library, which boasted innumerable volumes, some quite rare and some quite scandalous, on every subject under the sun, including love.

Love. Had she found a chance to sin‑she hadn’t‑she would have been only an auntie away from discovery. There was no end of them in India, where families were large and there was no such thing as privacy.

Certainly Carlyle was the only man she had ever wanted to kiss. The feeling was so strong that it had surprised her. They talked freely, spent happy hours in each other’s company, but he kept a courteous distance, perhaps because he was fifteen years older. She had been just twenty‑one then, with no experience of life beyond India, save what she could learn from the illustrated London magazines that sometimes reached Jaipur a year or more after the news in them was truly news.

Good or bad, the world beyond the palace walls had seemed too distant to worry about. Her father’s death had changed all that. Her heart had been shattered.

Almost too numb to feel anything, she’d been grateful for Carlyle’s guidance. He’d followed Mr. Fowler’s instructions to the letter and brought them all from India to this bewildering city, where she knew no one well besides Carlyle. He saw to it that she had whatever she needed and her father’s name opened some‑but not all‑doors. Alfred Fowler had earned a measure of fame dealing in gems, and the maharajah had kept him on retainer for just that reason. He’d made a small fortune that would have lasted a lifetime in India. But not in London. Therefore, she must marry.

Susannah looked at her reflection as she began to brush her hair again, singing under her breath, an Indian melody from long ago. A lonely woman awaited her lover, who did not come to her‑oh, how did it go? The words escaped her. After many months in London, she had forgotten a great deal. There was no one to speak Hindi with, and Lakshmi preferred the dialect of her village.

By a happy accident, on one of their recent excursions, her maid had found a few of her Rajasthan countrymen selling carpets in a cluttered shop. Lakshmi had chattered eagerly with the buxom wife of one, promising to return to the unfamiliar lane into which they had ventured, but Susannah could not remember where it was.

She would have to get a street map of London and try to retrace their path. It would do Lakshmi good to be among people who understood her, to eat familiar food, and be made welcome. The maid was gawked at whenever she went out, and she preferred to stay in the house, hovering over Susannah in a way that was not healthy.

Lakshmi was growing thinner and more nervous each day. Susannah suspected that her Indian maid was indeed lonely. But what future was there for her here?

That was a question she might as well ask herself. Susannah put down the brush. She had gone along with Carlyle’s programme, if it could be called that, of social events and introductions to eligible men, realizing without him telling her that her father probably would have brought her back to London eventually and done the same thing.

Her father’s banker controlled the sum that had been left to her, waggling a finger and counseling prudence every time she saw him. Her requests for money had to be made in writing and in person, which was a nuisance. She supposed it was better than having to beg a husband for money, but even so…

She sighed. Susannah had yet to meet a man in London she liked. The raffish Englishmen she’d known in India were very different, adventurous by nature, and not well suited for husbandhood. If pressed, she would have to count Carlyle among them.

She had not been quite sure then what he did to earn his living, and she still wasn’t sure. Her father had mentioned that the young officer had some connection to the East India Company, that he showed great promise, that he had an excellent head for business and was thoroughly trustworthy in all his dealings, but precisely who employed Carlyle Jameson or why was never made clear to her.

The details of the day she had met him‑and all the time they had spent together‑were still clear in her mind. By contrast, she had very little memory of the months after her father’s death, but perhaps that was to be expected. Yet Susannah knew her father would not have wanted her to mourn overlong‑he had loved life and hoped she would find happiness.

Was it wrong to wonder if that might be found with Carlyle? She liked everything about him, including just looking at him. He had dark hair that was almost black and gray‑green eyes; and he was strongly built and tall, far taller than many Englishmen in India, who seemed to wilt in the heat upon arrival and never recover. It might be said that he thought a trifle too highly of himself, but a single defeat at chess had curbed that tendency on the day they had met.

He had seemed so startled when she checkmated him. Susannah had explained her strategy, pointing to the chessboard.

“I placed my bishop here‑and a knight there‑so that you perceived an attack where there was none, Mr. Jameson. You wasted precious time and too many moves on an imaginary enemy. And so I conquered.”

He had given her a wry look that acknowledged as much, but he managed to smile at her. “Well done, Miss Fowler. You are a sly one.”

The remark had piqued her. “That is not a compliment.”

“It is the truth and the mischievous look in your eyes is proof enough.”

“Then I must accept it.” She’d packed away the chessmen in an ivory box, handling each piece with care. She looked up and caught him admiring her.

Carlyle cleared his throat, embarrassed. “Hmm. I would be happy to play once more. I thought I was rather good at the game.”

She’d inclined her head, twirling a wayward strand of dark brown hair around her finger. “You are. But I have had lessons from the maharajah’s teacher. The Indians invented chess, you know.”

He possessed some skill at the game, but he was too bold by nature to be brilliant at it, a sword‑waving warrior rather than a strategist. Susannah smiled to herself. Boldness was a very appealing quality. And she hadn’t minded winning so often. She knew it was not because he let her.

Her father and his eccentric friends‑a mélange of races‑were nothing like Carlyle, preferring to sit and smoke cheroots and talk about old times. But the newly arrived Englishman preferred to ride and shoot and charge around in the open air, seeming to sit down only when he wanted to recount his adventures or challenge her good‑humoredly to another match or simply to listen to her talk.

His company was a very great pleasure. They often went into her favorite haunt, the maharajah’s library, when he sought to find out something about the land he had come to. Perhaps that had been only a pretext for getting to know her. It had worked.

Susannah had instructed him in all things Indian, naively not realizing that he was just as interested in how she looked by moonlight as he was in evening ragas…until that moment she had wanted him to kiss her.

She liked to think that he had somehow planted the suggestion in her mind. After all, he was handsome and gallant, and love was a game he could very well beat her at, especially when he was the only Englishman around. He had competition here in London‑of a sort. The men she had been introduced to thus far were extremely dull by comparison.

At least she could choose, unlike an Indian bride. It was unfortunate that none of the possible candidates had interested her. But she had been polite, exceedingly so, to all of them.

Susannah stifled a yawn. Eventually she would marry. Women did. But she hoped she would not end up with a husband like the fellow occupying the seat next to hers in the theater box tonight, an acquaintance of Susannah’s half‑aunt. He had dozed off before the second act. She and Mrs. Posey left early.

The prospect of attending an unending series of social occasions with her elderly chaperone was not a pleasant one. Susannah frowned. Mrs. Posey exhorted her to think of her future‑but did that mean becoming the wife of a man she could never love? To be truthful, she doubted that she could find one who would love her.

She sensed the disapproval in the whispered comments about her “background,” as her life in India was referred to by the more narrow‑minded. Some seemed to regard her as positively exotic, though she looked as English as any of them. And it had been a rude shock to find out that an excellent education was considered a drawback in a woman.

It occurred to her that her father would have told them all to go to the devil. She might just do the same some day, given a cup of strong punch. Carlyle would laugh, she knew. Oh dear. Why had her father not simply left instructions that she was to marry him ? She supposed he was penniless. That was why second sons got packed off to places like Rajasthan.

Still, it was Carlyle she hoped would come to call, his boots she wanted to hear upon the stone steps of the town‑house in Albion Square, his face smiling down at her that she wished to see.

He continued to keep a courteous distance, though, which discouraged her. Susannah frowned, not wanting to think about it. She attacked the clutter upon the dressing table, tucking engraved invitations back into the mirror frame, putting her brush and comb back on their silver tray, and capping the jar of sweet‑smelling powder. She collected her hairpins and put them in a china dish, then looked about for something more useful to do.

There was the corset. There was no reason for Lakshmi to fret over such a minor repair. Susannah could sew the pearls on just as well.

She rose and got her sewing basket from inside the wardrobe, taking out a shawl to cover her bare shoulders too. Wrapping it carelessly around herself, Susannah looked in the sewing basket for her half‑spectacles, which she put on, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror again.

Fie. She looked like an old maid. She pouted in a way that would have amused her father, and picked up the corset from the chest of drawers.

Once settled in the armchair, a small pair of scissors in her other hand, she looked for the pearls that hung by a thread and found them. She could not decide whether to snip the thread or save it, and while she was thinking, accidentally jabbed the sharp point of the scissors into one padded rib of the corset.

A flash of dark red made her suck in a breath, thinking she had cut herself without knowing it. She squinted at her thumb. She hadn’t. She squinted at the corset. But she had‑there was a drop of dark red blood. Yet the pink silk was not stained by it, which was odd. She touched the drop and realized that it was hard.

Very odd.

Susannah sat up straight and the shawl fell off her shoulders without her noticing it. She squeezed the slash in the silk. A ruby popped out and fell in her lap, glowing red against the white material of her petticoat.

What on earth…? She ran a fingernail along the rib. Another ruby fell out, then another. When she was done, there were twenty in all. She left them in her lap and held up the corset to count the ribs. There were ten on each side of the front hooks. Now that she had emptied one rib, the others felt suspiciously stiff.

She cut a small, almost invisible slash into a rib on the other side. The channel yielded twenty sapphires of a vibrant dark blue. By midnight, she had taken hundreds of small precious stones out of the corset. Her petticoat was filled with winking blue and red points of light.

She smiled ever so slightly, looking down at them. Anyone else who’d stumbled across unexpected treasure would have been agog with excitement, but Susannah knew enough about gems and gem‑dealing to keep quiet‑and to keep her discovery to herself. She dipped a hand into the stones and let them cascade through her fingers.

Her father had sometimes allowed her to look at and even play a little while with his cache of gemstones and pearls, but he’d kept a watchful eye on her and on his precious stock in trade. Most of it was destined for the workshop of the palace artisans, to be set into rings and dagger hilts and turban brooches and ceremonial objects. The maharajah liked to dazzle his subjects‑it was expected of him‑and rewarded his courtiers with such things, to say nothing of his concubines.

Alfred Fowler cared very little for gems, except for the price he could get for them. He was a shrewd trader, buying low and selling high. Very high. When she was older, he’d told her that it was best not to keep such things around. She’d feared for him and for herself, but he’d said the maharajah would kill anyone who dared to steal from his treasury.

He had shown her the ingenious hidden compartments in his traveling cases and trunks, but he never put the real goods in there. The compartments were filled with paste jewels and lacquered beads that resembled pearls to satisfy a thief.

While traveling on business, he preferred to conceal gems and pearls inside belts and the seams of his clothes, so nothing could be taken from him‑without the use of force, of course.

Someone had thought along similar lines and stuffed the pink corset in the same way. The gems were of high quality as far as she could see, but she would need a jeweler’s loupe to assess them properly. There was one somewhere in a wooden chest filled with mementoes of her father. Susannah picked up the largest ruby, wondering if her father had planned to smuggle the gems out. It would not be the first time Alfred Fowler had done such a thing.

Taking opium for the pain of his final, wasting illness had made him ramble, and he had told her of many things that were best forgotten. But he had said nothing of this. Ought she to ask Carlyle? Or was it possible that Lakshmi had hidden the gems there?

She could not imagine why or where the girl might have got them. Had Lakshmi sewn the corset? It was possible‑the embroidery was distinctly Indian in design. Susannah had come across it this morning when she was clearing out a drawer, finding it at the bottom. She had admired it with a trace of puzzlement, not remembering where it had come from or who made it. Several of the palace women had worked to provide her with clothing that was suitable for England, and it had all been packed for her. But that was months ago.

She held up the corset and looked at it closely. It was cleverly fashioned and the embroidery was very fine.

The Indian maid had seemed nervous when Susannah discovered the loose pearls, but then she’d been flighty and distracted for the last few weeks.

It was all very strange. Susannah’s forehead furrowed when she thought back to the time of their departure from India.

Carlyle had insisted that Lakshmi accompany them to London when another girl would have done just as well.

Now that she thought of it, she’d heard the maid’s name muttered in connection with some court scandal around the time of her father’s death. Out of respect for Susannah’s feelings, no one had said much. There were so many scandals in the palace anyway, where gossip was rife, especially in the zenana, where the concubines lived.

If only she could remember more.

It hardly seemed possible that a village girl like Lakshmi would have thought of concealing gems in such a way. Susannah doubted that her maid had ever seen a corset before coming to her. Lakshmi had been the servant of the maharajah’s favorite, whose shapely body was never pinched and poked by such beastly things.

Susannah rose, tossing the corset onto the bed before she folded the heap of rubies and sapphires in part of her topmost petticoat. She bent to pick up her evening shoes from the floor.

Numerous as they were, the gems could be easily hidden under paper stuffed in the toes, the shoes put back in their box, the box returned to the bottom of her closet, and no one would be the wiser.

She sat down on the bed and let go of the petticoat she had been clutching to sort out the stones, putting the rubies in the left shoe and the sapphires in the right.

Once she’d found tissue paper and crumpled it into the toes, she put the shoes away. She would not wake Lakshmi, who was not likely to tell the truth if she were confronted. Even if the maid had not smuggled the stones, she had hidden the corset. But someone had to have put her up to it.

The only likely culprit would be Carlyle Jameson. Susannah went back to the bed and dragged the crocheted afghan from its place at the foot of the white comforter. She tucked her feet under it, still thinking. There could be a good reason for Carlyle having the gems. Her father might have given them to him as payment for taking care of her. But having and hiding were two different things.

If they were indeed her father’s gift, Carlyle might not have wanted to tell her. She supposed he wouldn’t want her to know that he had been well paid for his services on her behalf, being an officer and a gentleman and all that.

Hmm. Perhaps there was a better word than payment. Alfred Fowler was not above out‑and‑out bribery when it served his interests.

So that was why Carlyle had been at such pains to get her out of India and handle every complication of introducing her into society‑it was a rewarding job in every sense.

Bah. And she had thought he liked her. Another thought occurred to her. The corset was hers and, for now, so were the gems. If Carlyle Jameson didn’t own up to what he had done, she might as well sell them. Of course, she would not do so until the mystery of how they got there in the first place was solved. But she would have them appraised. Just in case she got to keep them.

She had no doubt of their value. Susannah jumped up from the bed and put the corset on top of her sewing box. She would either wear it or keep it with her. She preened a bit in front of the mirror, putting on a haughty smile. The fantasy of being a very wealthy woman‑who didn’t have to marry anyone‑was deliciously wicked.

In the house next door…

Lost in reverie, his long legs stretched out in front of him, Carlyle Jameson stared into the fire. Red, orange, hot pink‑the intense colors of the licking flames reminded him of India. He was trying not to think of Susannah in that damned corset.

Perhaps it was a lucky thing he had chanced to see her tonight, for more reasons than one. It was time to remove them. She need never know. Once the rubies and sapphires and diamonds were sold, Lakshmi, a pawn in a cruel game that had now played out five thousand miles away, would be set for life. Once he had found out about the gems, he’d thought they would spirit the corset out of Susannah’s bedroom, remove the jewels, and put it back. She would be none the wiser, and they could sell them.

But Lakshmi had been skittish and uncooperative. Understandably, she was afraid of the maharajah, to whom the gems belonged, even though the old fellow was a few continents away. Still, it was very likely that they had been followed by his agents and were being watched.

Perhaps he should not have waited so long. But Carlyle had been leery of selling the stones right away if the least breath of scandal would have hurt Susannah’s chances. So much time had gone by that he thought it was now worth a try‑but he could be wrong. Very wrong. A dagger‑wielding assassin was not likely to listen to the very good reasons why Carlyle had kept Lakshmi’s secret or that he had not smuggled the stones out of India in the first place.

Lying low had seemed the best thing to do. Lakshmi had hidden the corset in yet another place, but it seemed that Susannah had found it somehow, put it on, and liked the way she looked. So had he. His groin ached with the memory.

But she had that effect on him anyway, quite without trying.

Passing by earlier in the day he’d found Susannah poised on the doorstep, quite properly dressed. She’d waved as she’d waited for the carriage which would take her and her chaperone, Mrs. Posey, a whiskery female of great age and impeccable reputation, twice around the park to see and be seen.

It had occurred to him that they would not be gone long. It was about to rain. He thought he might call upon her.

Somehow the modesty of her costume had only added to her allure. Susannah had been wearing a high‑necked dress of light gray silk with a subtle stripe in a darker gray. He remembered every detail. The stripes, nipped in and narrow at her waist, widened over her bosom in a distracting way.

Still stunned by seeing that very bosom nearly bare just a short time ago, Carlyle shook his head and put the delectable vision out of his mind, feeling a little ashamed of himself. He had promised her late father to take very good care of Susannah. To that end, he had brought her back to England and rented fully furnished houses side by side‑one for her and one for him, with an eye to propriety and her safety. He had seen to the matter of her father’s will and her inheritance, and other financial concerns, and enlisted her only relative to help him launch Susannah in society‑in short, he had done everything he could for her.

As much as he liked Mr. Fowler, Carlyle knew he had been artfully persuaded by him‑the man had played upon his sympathies with uncommon skill. Knowing that his illness was terminal, Mr. Fowler had put his affairs in order.

He provided Carlyle with letters of introduction, and more important, a generous letter of credit, charging him to spare no expense to establish his motherless daughter in society.

Carlyle, who had rather a reputation, realized that the older man knew nothing of it. He had pointed out that he was not the best choice for such a delicate assignment, but Susannah’s father had replied that he was the only choice: there were no other Englishmen in Jaipur.

The man was dying. Carlyle could not very well tell him no.

Before that sad day came, Mr. Fowler drew up a declaration of guardianship himself, should anyone look askance at a worldly fellow of thirty‑eight traveling with an unmarried woman of twenty‑three. Whether the document was legally valid was an open question, but it looked impressive, bristling with gold seals and stamps and inky signatures, tied up with a thin red ribbon.

Mr. Fowler had made himself clear. His beloved Susannah could not be left in Rajasthan. Without a father or male relative to protect her, she would fall victim to intrigues among the women in the zenana, forever squabbling to advance themselves and their offspring in the regard of their aging ruler. Many would no longer feel obliged to be kind to the young English girl who had been raised among them.

As Carlyle well knew, a solitary female in that faraway land had few choices in life. Susannah might have ended up drifting from rich household to rich household as a governess, earning a pittance teaching the children of the East India Company families or Rajput princelings whose papas wished them to acquire a proper British education. But she would soon fade away into poverty and isolation.

His second promise to Mr. Fowler was turning out to be rather harder to keep: He was to find a suitably well‑to‑do Englishman of good character, although it had to be someone who would not ask too many questions about her somewhat unusual upbringing, and marry her off. Carlyle hated the idea.

Susannah would not discuss the subject with him in any case. He wondered why. An advantageous match was what every young woman dreamed of, or so he had heard. He was not the marrying kind himself. Nonetheless, she went out to balls and plays and dinners dutifully enough, escorted by Mrs. Posey. A distant half‑aunt of hers, who lived in the country and seldom came to town, had charged her London friends to invite Susannah to anything attended by persons in trousers, to improve her odds.

Carlyle seldom went along. The easy familiarity of their relationship‑they had known each other for more than a year in India‑might have put off prospective suitors. Her father did not seem to have considered Carlyle himself as a suitable candidate for a husband, although he liked and trusted him, praising his intelligence and pluck and so forth, as so many did.

It did not matter. Whatever his sterling qualities, Carlyle was a second son who had gone to India to seek a fortune which had eluded him thus far. All the same, he might make one someday; she would have to marry one.

The odds were in her favor. In London, Susannah was an unknown, which made her all the more intriguing. She dressed beautifully‑well, she was beautiful to begin with‑and tailored her conversation to the company, which amused Carlyle, who had pegged her as a remarkably independent sort from their first meeting. But she seemed to have grasped that her late father’s wishes were as good as a command.

In the weeks since they had come to London she had been quite ladylike…almost prim. His fault, in a way. He had been a perfect gentleman, Carlyle thought ruefully. Not like him. Not like him at all. But he was determined to be satisfied with polite chitchat and discreet lusting after Susannah, and that was that.

A spark escaped the grate and Carlyle stamped it out with the toe of his boot, frowning.

If it were up to him, her lovely body would not be confined within the acres of material that constituted proper attire for a well‑bred woman in the reign of Queen Victoria. In Jaipur, Susannah had floated about in gauzy, simple dresses. No swags, no furbelows, no bothersome drapery‑it was simply too hot. No stiff petticoats‑the climate wilted anything starched within seconds.

To preserve her complexion, she had favored wide‑brimmed hats of light straw, delighting him on the first day he’d seen her with a flirtatious peek from under the brim of one.

Her eyes were large and blue, fringed with dark eyelashes. The fierce sun that beat down upon her hat made tiny dots of light dance on her cheekbones and the look she’d given him made his breath catch. He’d had to fight the impulse to raise a hand to her face and gently brush the light away.

She was impossibly pretty. He’d thought so even after she trounced him at chess later that same day, sitting inside a pavilion of pierced stone in the maharajah’s enclosed garden. Susannah had added insult to injury by pointing out that he had not been paying attention. Of course not. How could he, faced with so lovely an adversary?

And so she conquered. More than she knew.

After that day, they had played many more times, and he was far more watchful, but almost never won. In the ensuing months, they had become good friends, progressing to fond flirtation, but no more than that. Susannah was young and headstrong, a volatile combination. His respect for her father‑and his own wish to steer clear of complicated romantic entanglements‑meant that Carlyle kept a certain distance.

Until that night by the reflecting pool when he had almost kissed her.

She had looked enchanting in the moonlight, her blue eyes wide and expectant, her hands folded demurely in her lap. But he could not bring himself to touch his lips to hers‑and in the end, it hadn’t mattered.

As her father grew increasingly weak, she spent all her time with him, until the inevitable. Clad in black, wrapped in silent grief, she never complained through the overland journey out of the Rajasthan hills to the coast and the long sea voyage home. Indeed, she had scarcely looked at him during those months until the stormy day they had arrived in London.

The fire before him now was not warm enough to make the memory less dismal. Carlyle crossed his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankles, thinking back on it.

A driving rain had drenched them all as they disembarked, and the carriage Carlyle had arranged for by post was nowhere to be found. The docks had been utter chaos, crowded with ships and shouting men unloading passengers and goods. Crowded into a leaking hackney cab, they’d jolted off to Albion Square. The fellow on the box had grumbled loudly because Susannah would not let him whip his horse.

Chilled through, holding up the bedraggled skirts of her traveling costume, she had gone upstairs immediately, assisted by her Indian maid. Lakshmi, who knew English but rarely used it, spoke soothingly to her in dialect.

He had wished he understood. The two women seemed so homesick and so ill‑at‑ease in London. As for himself, Carlyle was content enough. He could soldier on anywhere, it seemed. But he would be happier if Susannah was as happy as she’d been in India.

Alone in his house, he was keenly aware of her presence right next door. Hmm. She was probably swanning around in white linen petticoats and that nearly transparent camisole. He imagined her putting one foot on a needle‑pointed stool‑did she have one?‑and unrolling a stocking.

Carlyle shifted in his chair.

He mused upon how lovely she had looked in that gray striped dress‑a subdued color that marked the transition from one stage of mourning to the next. Her father was adamant that she was not to go about in black for long. Mr. Fowler had told Carlyle to find her a fashionable dressmaker as soon as possible, cost be damned. He paid no attention to the younger man’s statement that he knew of none.

The long and the short of it, the half‑aunt helped Carlyle find a dressmaker and everything else a young unmarried woman might require, including Mrs. Posey for the sake of decency, and a hairdresser who visited weekly, a few servants and a carriage to convey her about town, stabled in the mews behind the row of houses on her street. All quite necessary for husband‑hunting, the half‑aunt assured him. Compared to it, bagging tigers was easy sport.

So far no one had proposed. As her guardian, he would have had to listen to any such declarations, expecting some to come from men who were far older than he was. But he could not simply claim her for his own, although there was no one to forbid it.

He had made promises to a dying man‑one did not renege on such vows. And Carlyle had no chance of inheritance. His married older brother, the earl, was in robust health and disapproved of life‑shortening vices such as drink, while indulging freely in life‑enhancing ones. Carlyle was an uncle several times over to nephews born on both sides of the blanket.

His role as Susannah’s protector was eminently respectable in all its particulars, despite what had happened tonight. By mutual agreement, Carlyle even had a key to her house, but he did not come and go as he pleased.

Ah, if only he could. Carlyle thought that he still would not go so far as to steal a kiss but…he would not refuse one.

She would never do such a thing. A good reputation was hard‑won and easily lost, as he knew only too well. But a man might dream all the same.

He drummed his fingers on the armrests of his chair. If Susannah was sitting on his lap, looking very pretty and not very proper…wriggling just a bit…The thought made his groin tense and he sat up, feeling rather too warm. Carlyle looked at the clock upon the mantelpiece.

He dismissed his sensual fantasy as he stood and stretched. Perhaps a breath of fresh air would clear his head. He could not and must not take advantage of his role as her guardian. She trusted him. As far as the corset was concerned, he was blameless. Of course, if she found the gems hidden in it, she might think otherwise.

It was time to get rid of the evidence, so to speak. And it was not as if Susannah would wear such a fancy corset often. Stealing it would be easy enough. Carlyle headed off to his solitary bed.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 529