Kaleidoscope: A Regency Novella (4 page)

She missed Charles. She missed India. Life there was not always perfect, but it had been filled with patterns she recognized and found comfortable.

Coming to England might have been a mistake, but she’d promised Charles she’d relocate here. She hadn’t fit into Anglo-Indian society, which had begun excluding those with Indian blood, and Charles had thought that when he was gone, she could come to England and start anew. He’d imagined that her connections to an earl’s family would make her mixed heritage less important. Charles had also stressed that she had people she could trust to handle the Calcutta end of the business and that the weakest connection was in London.

Neither she nor Charles had imagined that his nephew and the rest of the family would be so resistant to her arrival, however. Their hostility had made her acceptance nearly impossible. She was determined to make a place regardless of their attitudes—but it was hard.

She wanted to hear Charles’ beloved voice again. Unconsciously, her hand reached out and stroked the smooth surface of the kaleidoscope he’d given her so long ago. It made her feel close to him and was a symbol of his many kindnesses. She leaned over and peered through the ocular. Rotating the cylinder, she watched the patterns change. Each form was predictably unpredictable—each shape different, yet still beautiful.

But how she wished she could return to the patterns of old.

 
  

Patterns for May 1825

L
uke leaned over the
hand-drawn floor plan and pointed to the east wall of his half-brother Templeton’s office. “The safe is there, behind a panel to the right of the fireplace. The panel opens by pushing on the right side.” He looked up at Tremaine’s lowered head. “You’re sure this locksmith you know can pick a safe?”

Tremaine gave him a gleeful smile. His friend seemed to relish all this plotting. Tremaine’s attitude and his ability to quickly produce a dishonest locksmith gave credence to the rumors that the older man had done something clandestine in the war with Napoleon. By comparison, Luke, who’d initiated the harebrained idea, was a nervous mess.

“Sharp can pick it, as long as you’re sure it’s there,” Tremaine said.

“Lord help us. Your lock pick is named Sharp?”

“It’s what I’ve always called him.” Another cheeky grin appeared.

“Well, I know the safe is there. Before I became
persona non grata
, father sent me to Templeton’s to have some family papers stored there. Temp was happy to show off his new safe, which he’d had installed behind a false wall in an opening next to one of the large chimneys. Father, at least, was convinced this was more secure than the safe at his house. So, if my mother’s jewels are anywhere, that’s where they should be.”

“But you’re not sure they’re there?”

“No.” That was the wrinkle in the plan.

His father hadn’t summoned him until his mother lay dying. He’d been appalled at her skeletal appearance, her wheezing breath. Regret closed his own throat. He should have forced the issue and insisted on seeing her when he’d first heard she was ill. But his pride, his damned arrogant pride, had kept him from begging entry into a house where the door had been locked against him. Until it was too late for any true rapprochement.

He’d lifted his mother’s hand and gently kissed the parchment dry skin that clung tightly to the bones.

Her pale blue eyes opened. “Lucien?”

“
Oui, ma mere
.”

“The marriage settlement is clear. The jewels are yours.”

And then her eyes closed and she slept. She never reawakened.

His father couldn’t ban him from a funeral at which he was a chief mourner, but afterwards, when he asked about the loose stones his mother’s family had brought with them from France during the Terror, he was met with a blank stare. “She long ago sold them to aid other émigrés,” his father said and walked away.

Luke knew his father lied. At the time, with his supposed disgrace still fresh, he’d assumed his father withheld the gems as part of his punishment. But his father had continued to deny the jewels’ existence—as if Luke had not played with them as a boy. As if, when he was grown, his mother had never mentioned them as his legacy protected by her marriage settlement.

Well, enough was enough. He would simply take what was his. He’d already been delayed over a month due to his injuries.

“Will everything be in place for the night of the Hazelton’s ball?” he asked Tremaine.

“The Earl of Kelton requests a moment of your time.” Sanjeet’s delivery was bland, but his eyebrows were raised in the question his inflection didn’t indicate. As manager of Rydell Shipping, Sanjeet shared Carolyn’s enmity with her late husband’s nephew. He’d strutted around the office for days when he learned she’d put Kelton on the floor with the hook-and-push trick he’d taught her.

But what was Gerald doing here? He never came to the Rydell Shipping offices. He preferred to pretend the shared name was happenstance, since the family of a peer wouldn’t be involved in crass commerce. He’d appreciated the monthly stipend this commerce generated, of course. Its withdrawal had probably prompted his visit.

Carolyn hadn’t seen him in nearly a month, not since their argument at her house. Before his death, her late husband Charles had suggested giving some money to that side of the family to make them more amenable to easing her way into London society. The idea had been a good one; it just hadn’t worked. Charles would have been the first to tell her to stop a bribe when it didn’t have the desired effect.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“In the outer office.”

“Good. Keep him away from anything with numbers on it and give me five minutes to put the ledgers away here. Then bring him up.”

Sanjeet nodded and left as she methodically stacked the ledgers in the deep bottom drawer of her desk. She suspected Gerald wouldn’t have any interest in the company’s profits and losses, but Charles had taught her to guard all financial information. She was sitting at the desk with a three-year-old bill of lading in front of her when Gerald entered.

“Lord Kelton, what brings you here?” She definitely wasn’t going to say it was a pleasure to see him. She was done with polite lies.

“I called at your house a few times, and you were not at home.”

And to him, she never would be, but that was unnecessary to say, even in the service of honesty. “Is there a reason for your diligence in hunting me down?” She remained seated, but didn’t offer him the same courtesy.

“I had an interesting conversation with Dr. Grumman a few days ago. He’s retired now, but still frequents our club.” He looked at her expectantly. Caro had no idea who Grumman was, but since Gerald was obviously so pleased with meeting him, she was sure she wouldn’t like the man.

“And…” She waited for the rest of his revelation.

“He’s been the Rydell family doctor for years. He was reminiscing about the last time he saw Charles, which must have been a dozen years ago on his last voyage home. When I told him Charles’s widow was here, he was very surprised. It seems that Charles went to Dr. Grumman about impotence caused by some tropical disease he’d contracted. And Grumman diagnosed the problem as untreatable.”

Caro came to her feet. “This is not a topic one discusses with a lady. I think you should leave.”

“Oh, I think this is an excellent topic to discuss with my late uncle’s so-called widow. I could imagine an old man wanting a mistress like you to revive his failing masculinity, but now that I know he was incapable of consummation—”

“Out!” She imperiously pointed toward the door.

Instead, he slouched into a chair with a smarmy grin. “Why should I leave the office of a company that will soon be mine? You can wave that phony Indian marriage certificate around all you want, no English court is going to believe Charles Rydell actually married someone like you when he couldn’t even bed you. My attorney is confident that we can prove you’re the charlatan that mother and I have always known you to be.”

“You are crude and uncouth. You have no idea what a real marriage is like. Rydell Shipping will never be yours. Leave now!” She raised her voice. “Sanjeet!”

The small Indian’s head popped through the door so fast that it was obvious he had been hovering just outside. “Get some men to escort this man out and make sure he is never again admitted.”

Sanjeet nodded and disappeared. Gerald came to his feet and sauntered to the door. “I can see myself out. Enjoy your little piece of power. It won’t be yours much longer.”

The two large footmen who traveled with her to the dock area arrived but stood aside as Gerald did, indeed, see himself out. Caro subsided back into her desk chair. “Close the door,” she said. She didn’t look up until she heard the latch click and knew she was alone. Then she let the tears come.

None of these cold, emotionless people on this cursed island would ever understand what her marriage to Charles had been like. She’d loved him. It was that simple.

She’d been fourteen when her father had senselessly died in a bridge collapse. She’d been lost, adrift—and Charles had been there for her. A surrogate father. A guide through the labyrinth of Anglo-Indian society. A mentor who taught her to take her father’s place at Howe & Rydell Shipping.

They’d married when she was seventeen after a disreputable young officer, attracted primarily by her wealth, had attempted to compromise her. Charles had already been ill with a combination of debilitating diseases, the curse of a European too long in the tropics, and had thought their time together would be short-lived. He’d hoped to protect her by giving her the status of his wife. He had seen, even then, that the East India Company would soon rule all of India, and the more English she seemed, the safer her future would be.

As it turned out, they had eight years together—years that had seen her grow in experience and confidence. Years that had seen her slowly take control of the company now called simply Rydell shipping. Happy years.

Charles had explained from the first that they could not truly live as man and wife and had often expressed his guilt that he’d taken so long in dying. He felt he’d stolen her youth. But Caro saw their marriage as time well spent. Yes, she’d loved him—and missed him horribly.

She’d never imagined that anyone would discover their marriage had not been consummated, however. This information was personal and private. Information that if bandied about would demean Charles’s memory.

Tight fear twisted her gut. Would the fact that she and Charles hadn’t enjoyed marital relations void her marriage? She had no idea if this would make any difference in English law. She recalled reading the phase “wedded and bedded” somewhere, but she thought that applied to marriages in the distant past. Would her persistent virginity negate an actual ceremony? Dear Lord, could Gerald insist she be examined by a physician? The thought sickened her.

Perdition! This sniveling behavior was counterproductive. As with all problems, she would attack this head-on. She pulled a crisp handkerchief from her reticule and blew her nose in a great honking, unladylike sound that echoed in the empty office and made her mouth curl into an ironic smile. She would never be an English lady—really hadn’t wanted to be one. She knew she’d never fit into society and had been content to live on the fringes.

But she was smart and not without her own area of influence. Ships sailed the world at her command. Because of her decisions, products from one continent were sold on another half a world away. She had money. She had beauty. There was no need to pretend false modesty when her mirror and men’s reactions told her the latter was true.

She would use her assets to fight the Earl of Kelton—and she would win. She would grind his haughty face into the dust of the street. All he had was the word of some ancient family doctor that Charles had been incapable of physically being her husband. She could easily eliminate the evidence of this fact. She simply had to find a discrete partner to relieve her of her long held virginity. The rest was the territory of lawyers, and she could hire the best. She suspected Gerald and his whey-faced mother would run out of money long before she did and have to retire from the field.