Chapter Three

A few days later…

It was now or never. Carlyle went to Susannah’s door and knocked. Mr. Patchen opened it, polishing a lamp globe vigorously with a rag.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Good afternoon. Is Miss Fowler at home?”

Mr. Patchen spat into the globe. “She is not, sir. She will not be back for several ’ours. She and that Lakshmi ’as gone shopping.” He resumed what he was doing, swirling the rag around in the globe and not looking at Carlyle.

Rude of the man. Had Susannah told the servants to keep him at bay? Carlyle had known neither she nor Lakshmi was at home. Familiar with her routines, he had waited until he saw them leave together and that was why he was here. But something about the other man’s stance‑Mr. Patchen nearly filled the doorway‑irritated him.

Carlyle was there to get the corset, of course. He had planned to borrow a book from the library‑it was on the second floor, next to her bedroom‑dash into that feminine sanctuary, rifle through her chest of drawers, and leave.

He put a booted foot on the top step, countering Mr. Patchen’s blocking of the doorway with a slight leaning forward of his body. The manservant leaned back a little, just enough for Carlyle to bring up his other foot and tower over the fellow.

“And what may I do for you, sir?” Mr. Patchen said, in a tone that sounded a trifle more agreeable.

“I had hoped to borrow a book‑something on India. I know it is in the library, but not exactly where. If I might browse for just a few minutes…”

“I suppose you could, sir. Miss Fowler would know where it is, though.”

Carlyle gave him a jovial smile. “Oh, I don’t think so. May I come in? Thank you.” He squeezed past Mr. Patchen, tempted to remind him who paid his salary.

He brushed past the new maid, Molly, who gave him a surprised look and then a tentative smile. Good. He had at least one ally within the house. He smiled back and took the stairs two at a time.

Carlyle reached the upper landing and went directly into the library, opening the door without making a sound. He shut it just as quietly and looked about. The room held thousands of volumes, shelved in double rows, the newer books in front of the older ones. Susannah came into it to read, he knew.

Her bedroom and sitting room were next to it, and the brief glimpse he’d had when he’d seen her in the corset would help him. Not that he had taken in the details of the decor on that startling night.

But she had told him that she and Lakshmi had made the round of the shops, and decorated with bright colors and pretty trinkets. He had no doubt that her rooms were as charming as their inhabitant and quite unlike the sobriety of the library.

There had been a chest of drawers and no doubt there was a closet. He hoped it would not take him long to find the corset.

He would need a book. Carlyle looked at the shelves. It would be best if the book were large enough to hide a corset, with floppy covers and a well‑worn spine. In other words, an old book.

There were many that would fit that description‑he pulled a few out at random. Now in India, Dr. Josephus, the owner of both the houses, was a scholar of ancient languages and the author of several tomes on Sanskrit that only a few people had read. He had been happy to let the place to a well‑recommended young woman who had penned a note of appreciation to him in graceful Hindi.

None of the books seemed large enough. Perhaps something more like a monograph, or a book of art prints. That would do to hold the thing.

He coughed and it echoed. For a room that held nothing but words, the library was profoundly silent. There was not a speck of dust in it, but the room had the faintly musty smell of old paper.

Carlyle kneeled down to the lower shelves, which held taller books, and drew out a volume bound in tattered silk brocade. He opened it carefully and saw the first illustration of lovers, quite naked, in a pavilion under the moon. He leafed through it, realizing he had found an exquisitely painted manual of the arts of love.

He could not read the ancient script but the paintings were ravishing. Tender couples entwined in dreamy bliss upon page after page, pleasuring each other in myriad ways. It was the perfect hiding place for the corset of a woman he would have loved to love in just that way.

Carlyle closed the book and walked out of the library, grateful for the thick Persian carpets that muffled his steps. He looked about on the landing, then peered down the stairwell. No one seemed to be polishing or sweeping anything. Most important, no one was coming up the stairs.

Her bedroom door was only a few feet away, but he would have to work fast. Carlyle turned the knob and took a precautionary peek before entering. He went straight to the chest of drawers, set the book on top of it, then began to open each one. He looked through the contents without leaving them in disarray, but doing it made his skin crawl. Should Mr. Patchen catch him at this underhanded business he would whack Carlyle with the poker and it would be just retribution. But he had to get those diamonds.

In the last drawer, in the back, he saw a bit of pink silk. He lifted up the rest of the clothes and there it was, limp. Something that would never happen to him if he was next to her skin, he thought, grinning.

He pulled it from the drawer and examined the ribbon rosebuds in the frill. They were still intact, tightly furled. He could feel a diamond deep inside one. Carlyle looked to her dressing table for scissors and saw a little pair that would serve very well.

He used one blade to open the rosebud, squeezed it just so and eased out the first diamond. It lay in his palm, giving off a cold light that seemed somehow accusatory. It took him less than a minute to remove the other five and put them in his pocket.

There was no time to resew the rosebuds and they looked much as they had. He folded the corset and put it back in the drawer, then picked up the book of love. He was looking forward to further study of its beautiful pictures.

Well and good. He had done it. Carlyle turned to go, but a noise in the garden made him cross the room to look out of her bedroom window.

Below him was the quince tree, near the end of its bloom, the center of a boxwood maze that had been carefully tended by the old scholar. Carlyle had wandered in it just last week with Susannah‑if twenty steps down a right‑angled brick path could be called wandering, especially with Mrs. Posey a discreet distance away.

Susannah and Carlyle had lingered for awhile all the same. The flowers reminded her of India, she’d said. He heard the wistful longing in her voice‑ah, how he loved the sound of her voice. It was as if he was hearing it right now.

But…he was. Susannah and Lakshmi were standing outside the door. He was caught in her bedroom, a place he had no reason to be.

“So you are a thief,” Susannah said quietly.

He was momentarily speechless. There was nothing he could say or do to extricate himself from this situation. Lakshmi looked at him, trembling all over, her doe eyes wide with fear. No doubt she could guess why he was there, but she wouldn’t give him away.

Carlyle could not confess everything. He had no idea how Susannah might react and there was much was at stake. But he had to say something.

“I came up to borrow a book.” He held it up but kept it tightly shut. If she saw what was inside it, he would be a dead man. Which sounded rather restful.

She barely glanced at the tattered brocade cover. “That is not mine.”

“No, it isn’t. It belongs to Dr. Josephus.”

“Do you think I have the right to lend out his books?”

“I will ask him myself,” Carlyle said boldly, then realized his mistake.

“Really? But he is in India,” she said icily. “And you should not be in my bedroom. Do not try to tell me that that book was in here. I have never seen it.” Susannah came into the room, putting down her things and brushing so close to him that he had to step aside. She turned around and did it again, and Carlyle realized that he was being herded out the door. If he stayed in her room a second longer, she would probably nip at his heels.

He had been bested and with a trick very like the one he had employed to get past Mr. Patchen. Humiliated by his undignified position, Carlyle told himself he was getting exactly what he deserved.

He stepped out into the hallway, nodding to Lakshmi and holding onto the book, trying to make the best of it. Susannah put her hands on her hips and glared the nonchalant expression right off his face. He straightened up.

“Forgive me. I should not have entered your room. I can only imagine what you must be thinking, Susannah.”

The look in her eyes would give any sane man pause. “No, you don’t, Carlyle Jameson. You haven’t the slightest idea. Get out.”

He cleared his throat. “I was just going.” He clutched the book as if it would protect him from her wrath, walked to the stairs, down them, and out the door. Not three seconds later, a large vase crashed at the base of the stairwell.

But you still have no real proof, Susannah told herself some hours later. Mr. De Sola had said only that the rubies and sapphires were probably stolen, not who had stolen them. And he’d added that it was often impossible to determine such things. She did not regret sending Carlyle Jameson packing, however.

How dare he stroll into her bedroom, as if he owned her house‑and her. She could not calm herself, could not stop seething. Despite her agitated state, she had gently dismissed Lakshmi for the night, telling her there was nothing to worry about, but she didn’t seem to have convinced the girl of that.

She could hear her in her room right now, singing something sorrowful in dialect. It was just as well Susannah couldn’t understand the words.

There was another reason for her dismissal of Lakshmi: Susannah wanted to examine the corset without the maid looking on. She pulled open the bottom drawer and took it out, smoothing it open on the bed and studying it carefully. It seemed the same. The ribbon roses were a little crumpled but the corset had been folded up for days. They were very pretty‑she toyed with one for a moment. It unfurled into a curling strand of soft silk ribbon and she felt a flash of irritation.

She had been spending a great deal of time fussing over this corset and now it needed mending again. Still, it was only one ribbon and it would not take a minute to roll it up and affix it more tightly.

Susannah looked about for her sewing box, then remembered that she had left it downstairs. She let out a sharp sigh, then turned to see Lakshmi at her door. She had not noticed that the singing had stopped.

The girl was looking at the curling strand of ribbon with something very like shock. And it dawned on Susannah that there had been something in those rosebuds that wasn’t there now. She took a very close look at the others. The furls had been loosened and one bore a tiny cut.

Probably made by the scissors that were on top of her chest of drawers. Where she hadn’t left them. The scissors had been on her dressing table, she was sure of it.

Lakshmi turned and fled down the hall. Susannah went after her. And before midnight, in bits and pieces and between sobs, she had the story from beginning to end.

So Carlyle had only been trying to help an Indian maid who might have been murdered, along with her erring mistress. Susannah was familiar with the ancient and often inhumane code of justice in India, and many aspects of it appalled her. She could not blame either party to the secret for keeping it.

No wonder Lakshmi had been unwell. She was consumed by guilt and afraid for her life. Perhaps she had left the corset where Susannah could find it as a mute plea for help. Susannah felt the maharajah did not deserve to get his trinkets back, not even his enormous diamonds, but she had a feeling that she had indeed been followed. By whom and why was a question she scarcely dared to think about. Most likely the maid had been followed also, but she might not have noticed, especially if her shadow was English.

Curled up in an armchair in her peaceful sitting room, Susannah knew she was not safe. But she could no more go back to Jaipur and give back the whole lot of gems than Lakshmi could. At least Carlyle had not been to blame‑she regretted her suspicions concerning him. Her own covetousness had made her cynical.

But Alfred Fowler liked to say that cynics did not deserve their bad reputation. They simply knew how the world worked, and said so plainly, a statement that made Carlyle roar with laughter when he’d heard it. Susannah did not know what to think anymore. London seemed suddenly more ominous than ever.

Her neighborhood was respectable, even elegant, but she found the city grim and gray. Despite Lakshmi’s revelations, Susannah passionately wished to be back under the sun of India where she might read her way through a library for a week without censure, or ride about upon an elephant, or fall under the spell of a centuries‑old temple, carved with wondrous beings and forgotten gods. Of course, she knew that her status as a foreigner‑and the only daughter of a man who had made himself useful to a powerful maharajah‑had permitted her such pleasures but that didn’t stop her from wanting to return to those innocent, carefree days.

Days that were gone forever. Stymied by the problem of what to do about the damned gems, her mind returned once more to Carlyle‑and that marvelous kiss. How could he have done it if he considered himself duty‑bound to marry her off? Where that was concerned he had been true to his word, and she supposed he had done his best. But the men he had selected as possible suitors were not to her taste. Her half‑aunt’s choices were no better. All she could remember of the fellows thus far were a few physical traits‑large nose, small chin, tendency to whiffling of mustache when lost in thought, that sort of thing‑and nothing at all about who they were.

Mrs. Posey said the particulars of physiognomy‑her unlovely phrase‑shouldn’t matter to a woman as long as her husband gave her pin money and a few children. Susannah found that prospect too dreary to think about. She could not become a docile wife, disappear into a dank London house filled with stuffed owls and grandfather clocks, and then just…procreate.

Her innocence was gone forever, too. But there were aspects of that she didn’t miss. The sensation of being in Carlyle’s arms and surrendering with mad joy to that incomparable kiss was well worth repeating. It would pass the time until he married her…to someone else. No. No. That could not happen.

Carlyle’s teasing words came back to her: You were the happy empress of your own domain . Far from it. She was as nearly powerless as most women. Her brief fantasy of independent wealth was never going to come true. But it was possible that she could be happy all the same. She would have to talk to Carlyle.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 570