Scandal in the Night (3 page)

“Puithar,”
she whispered into the mare’s long, elegant ear. “My sister, have you come as far as I? Was the way over the mountains as hard as the way over the sea? Was it all as strange and wondrous for you?” Her fingers instinctively rummaged through her pockets to find the half-eaten remains of the Kashmiri apple she had bought from a stall for one of the children. But one did not give an animal not one’s own a treat without permission. She knew it as well as she knew her own name.

Catriona turned her eyes to find the Punjabi horseman, Tanvir Singh, regarding her with those jewel-bright, amused eyes. So she held up the apple and raised her brows in wordless universal pantomime, for after only a few weeks on the subcontinent, she knew little Hindi or Urdu as yet, and absolutely no Punjabi.

Without a word, and without leaving his lofty perch atop his horse, the prince of rogues smiled at her. A smile so blindingly brilliant it could melt the snowcaps high on the mountains beyond the Doab Valley’s hills. A smile that felt as if it were for her alone, and no one else in the world. He smiled and salaamed her with an elegant flourish, a deep bow and sweep of arm worthy of a pasha dispensing life-changing favors.

And it had changed her life. The little stone that was all that was left of her heart, hardened by death and exile, stirred—just a little—like the pitted seed of a peach learning to take root in rocky ground.

Foolish, treacherous heart.

*   *   *

“Have you forgotten?”

The warm memories washing over Catriona were as welcome as a cold wave from the Firth of Clyde, sweeping away every last trace of her composure, leaving her numb and all but shaking. She had been living at Wimbourne Manor as Miss Anne Cates if not in a state of constant fear, then in unhappy awareness that her past might very well catch up with her one day. Her guilt had been a stone lodged fast within her heart—a constant, uncomfortable reminder of sins left unabsolved.

But she had not expected
him,
of all people, to be the law’s mortal messenger. Why should Tanvir Singh—the man who had once been her friend, her only lover—have come looking for her? Why would he have left his Punjab to travel across thousands of miles of sea, to do the East India Company’s bidding, and bring her to their particular version of justice?

He had betrayed
her,
not the other way around.

Yet, here he was. In the flesh. Standing so close she had to tip her head back to convince herself this strangely familiar Englishman was in fact Tanvir Singh. She had forgotten how impossibly tall he was. She had made herself forget.

As if he could decipher her thoughts, the man who was
not
Tanvir Singh, but Thomas Jellicoe, asked, “Do you need me to remind you?” His voice was low and raw with accusation, and his eyes—his fierce green eyes—weighed her out as relentlessly as an executioner.

She needed no reminder. She had not forgotten as well as she had thought—in fact, she remembered every small thing. The bright, translucent green glow of his eyes regarding her through the dark veil of his lashes. The feel of his warm skin beneath her hands. The taste of his mouth upon hers. The precise power of his body. The crippling pain of his ultimate betrayal. His callous indifference.

Catriona pulled sharply against the hand that still held her. “You will excuse me,” was all she could manage, as she disentangled little Mariah’s hand from her own, and handed the child off to her older sister—Mariah could do without her, with so many adult relations near. Catriona had to get away from him. From the past that had finally caught up with her.

But how on earth could he have found her, when she had taken such great pains not to be found? Because all along he was not just Tanvir Singh, but Thomas Jellicoe, Lord Jeffrey’s brother? Had Lord Jeffrey written to him about her? And how much had this Thomas Jellicoe already told Lord Jeffrey?

God help her. The numbness began to be replaced by a hard knot of dread.

Her gaze shot to her employer, who was looking back and forth between her and his brother. Whatever it was Lord Jeffrey saw in her face—guilt, or at the very least, amazed horror—galvanized him into action. He stepped between them, and laid a restraining hand on his brother’s arm.

“Thomas.” He spoke quietly, but firmly. “That’s quite enough.”

Thomas Jellicoe ignored his brother, shaking him off with a ripple of his blade-lean shoulder. He reached for her again, even as she edged back, following her step by step, crowding against her skirts until she nearly tripped on her hems.

She had to draw her arms back, so he could not touch her. “Sir. Please!”

“For God’s sake, Thomas,” Lord Jeffrey hissed. “What is wrong with you? Kindly leave off and let my governess be. Your family is waiting. And watching, for Christ’s sake.”

Thomas Jellicoe—the name rang in her head like an echo from a hilltop—finally turned those fierce green eyes of his away, and his hold on her was broken. As if her bonds had snapped, she was free of him.

Catriona immediately put her head down and hurried away from the group, all but running across the lawn, moving instinctively toward the gap in the hulking shelter of the nearest yew hedge.

What must Lord and Lady Jeffrey think of her? Even though her employers seemed as shocked at his behavior as she, this Honorable Thomas Jellicoe was Lord Jeffrey’s brother, and blood was bound to be thicker than even the deepest gratitude. No matter how fond of her as a governess they may have grown, Lord and Lady Jeffrey would never take her part over his. And Catriona didn’t think she could face the look on Lady Cassandra Jeffrey’s lovely face when her mistress learned what the Honorable Thomas Jellicoe was sure to tell her—that Catriona Rowan was wanted for murder.

The metallic tang of fear slowly suffused her mouth. It would be as it was before. Powerful voices would speak against her, and there would be nothing she could do to prevent it.

No. She would prevent it. She would run.

She would be gone as soon as she could throw her possessions and the monies she had saved into a bag, and walk away across the fields, just as she had before, in India, and before that, in Scotland. She would not wait for the inexorable process of the law to slowly grind her up. She would be gone before he had a chance to spread his accusation like deadly poison.

Catriona gathered up her skirts in unmannerly fists to run down the short set of stone steps leading off the lawn, cursing the particularly cruel twist of fate that had brought the man who had been Tanvir Singh back into her life. Of all the places to hide in plain sight, she had somehow, blindly, unwittingly, chosen his brother’s house.

A sharp, sulfuric crack of lightning landed nearby, and rolled across the lawn just as a clump of grass in front of Catriona sprayed up with a dense hiss of green blades and brown soil. She stopped short as the concussion of thunder rolled through her chest.

But it was all wrong.

She glanced up to confirm the sky was still clear and cloudless. Yet a storm must be brewing. If so, they ought to take the children in. Little Mariah, especially, would be afraid of the clashing thunder.

She was about to turn, to look back over her shoulder, to perhaps speak to Lady Jeffrey about Mariah, when another loud crack echoed from somewhere to her left. A branch dropped off the yew hedge in front of her. And her shock-addled brain could no longer deny the evidence of her eyes. They were gunshots.

Thomas Jellicoe was too impatient to wait for the inexorable process of law to drag her back to India. He would not let her escape. He was shooting her now. In front of his family. In front of the children. Sweet Saint Margaret.

The air turned thick, slowing her motions. She heard the panicked cries of alarm behind her, and felt the heavy pounding of footsteps across the lawn as everyone began to run for cover, but when she finally managed to turn, screaming for them to shield the children, all she could see was the strange English version of Tanvir Singh bearing down on her with such a look of death and destruction, there was no room for anything else.

It was too late for her to escape. His hard, uncompromising body slammed into hers, carrying her to the ground beneath him, knocking the wind from her lungs.

“For pity’s sake,” he growled into her ear when she tried to fight her way out from under him. His large brown hand covered the back of her head, and shoved her face unceremoniously into the grass. His voice was like gravel grinding into her. “Stay down!”

He lay directly on top of her, all fifteen-odd stone of him, squashing her into the earth. Her chest began to ache with the struggle to draw breath. She squirmed against him, desperate to ease the air back into her lungs.

He bit off an exceedingly blunt Anglo-Saxon oath and shifted sideways. “Stop that. For God’s sake, don’t move like that.”

They were all tangled together—his leg had insinuated itself between her petticoats, and the hard ridge of his knee pushed against the inside of her thigh. His arms surrounded her, both pinning her against the ground and pulling her into him. He curved his long body around her, caging her with his strength.

Another shot whistled close by and his hands dug into her. “Now!” he ordered as he sprang to his feet and practically dragged her by the fabric of her gown, pulling and pushing, shoving her through a small gap at the base of the tall hedge of evergreens, and through them, into a veritable cave of dark quiet up against the low stone wall behind. He threw his back against the stone and pulled her roughly down next to him, wedging her hard into the corner where the wall and stone stairway separating the lawn from the maze came together. “Are you all right? Are you hit?”

She wasn’t hit, but she could not possibly be all right. Her bonnet was crushed and hanging limply askew, its ribbons sawing into her neck. She could taste dirt in her mouth, and she still had not been able to draw breath. One of the whalebone stays of her corset must have cracked under his onslaught. It bit into her like the blade of a knife. But mostly, she was decidedly
not
all right because the man who used to be Tanvir Singh was crouched next to her, his body still shielding hers. Protecting her. Damn him to hell and back.

Damn them both. Because if Thomas Jellicoe thought he was protecting her, then someone else entirely was shooting at her.

Catriona fought to control the searing panic spreading through her chest, and pull air into her lungs. To stay calm in the midst of such ungovernable chaos. “The children? Was anybody hit?”

In the dim, filtered light, Catriona felt, rather than saw, his head swivel toward her. “Taken out of range. The lawn is empty.” While he answered, his hands were busy taking inventory of her body, running along her limbs with the same sort of practiced, professional expertise and care he had used to examine his horses. There had been a time, once, when he had looked at her, and run his hands down her person in much the same way, yet there had been nothing practical or impersonal about his focused attention and open admiration.

The unwelcome thought was a painful reminder of what she no longer was to him.

“Stop that.” She wrenched his hands away. “I am quite all right. Apart from you nearly pummeling me to death.”

His hands withdrew, and there was a long moment of potent quiet and stillness while her blood pounded in her ears, and her eyes adjusted to the low gray-green light. But when he spoke, she could
feel
the wry humor in Tanvir Singh’s voice, as if his amused laughter were touching her where his hands were not.

“You’re welcome, mem. I’ll try to remember not to pummel you the next time I save your life.”

Chapter Three

“Save my life?” Catriona retreated into Miss Anne Cate’s starched primness to ward off the power of his roguish charm. She busied herself untangling the bonnet strings that were choking her in an effort to distract him from her lies. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Had he really come to save her? Or had he come to bring her to justice despite the gunshots being fired in her general direction? It just might suit this newly English Tanvir Singh’s flexible moral scruples and ironic sense of justice, to save her from a stray bullet only so she might be properly dispatched by the noose.

But he was smiling. The incongruous slash of his white teeth gleamed across the dark shadow of his face. “Did it somehow escape your notice—Miss
Cates,
was it?—that you were being shot at?”

Nothing about this ridiculous situation had escaped her notice, especially not the unnerving fact that she had been shot at by someone so ruthlessly underhanded and cowardly, he would hide behind a wall and try to dispatch her from a reckless, unreliable distance, when all he had to do was walk up to the front gate and declare Miss Anne Cates to be a fraud, as well as a fugitive from the law—wanted by magisterial authorities in no fewer than two, and quite possibly three, countries.

It was ridiculous that she seemed to have rivals for her demise. It was ridiculous that after so long, any of them should have taken the trouble to track her down. She had done nothing to provoke such interest. She hadn’t spilled so much as one bloody secret. She had kept her word.

But ridiculous seemed to be the way of her world. “What do you mean to do?”

The man who had become the Honorable Thomas Jellicoe misunderstood her. He looked out through the hedge. “At the moment, nothing. You’re safe enough here. The shots came from over the wall to the north, outside the estate, I should think. I imagine my brother is mustering his people in defense. At least I hope so.”

His voice was the same, low and textured, just rough enough for the sound to hum and vibrate through her. But the English diction and the enunciation sounded entirely alien, lacking all the formal, melodic undertones of the subcontinent. He no longer sounded like the voice in her dreams, her painful reminder through the sleepless nights of continuous exile, the murmuring ghost of sins past.

But it did not matter what he sounded like. He was not there to whisper love words into her ears. The thought compelled her to move. She started up, determined to crawl through the vicious bramble of branches at the base of the wall if it meant escape.