Silk and Shadows (52 page)

"Ross, do you have any idea what Mikahl is planning?" she asked, keeping her voice level so as not to disturb him.

"Don't know," he said tiredly. After a moment, he added, "Once I came into his study, and found him looking at some papers that he shoved into a concealed drawer in his desk. Maybe there's something there. Maybe not."

"I'll take a look," Sara said.

Ross was gray with fatigue, but he was not yet ready for sleep. "You won't do something foolish, will you?"

"No. I just want to understand what is happening." Sara's brow furrowed with thought. "Will you mind if I call the housekeeper to sit with you now? She said she'd relieve me if I wanted to go to bed."

Her cousin looked indignant. "Don't need anyone here."

"Well, I need someone to be here even if you don't." She leaned over and kissed his forehead. "Get some sleep now, my dear. Everything will be all right."

Yet even as she gave the automatic reassurance, she didn't believe it. Sara was not sure things would ever be all right again. She waited until Ross fell asleep, then rang for the housekeeper, Mrs. Adams. After she was relieved of her duty, Sara went down to the study. There were several standard types of concealed drawers, and it did not take long to locate and open the one in Mikahl's desk. Then, her face like granite, she took her husband's secret files upstairs to read.

It was about three in the morning when Peregrine quietly let himself back into his house. He stopped to look in on Ross and was surprised to see that Sara had been replaced. Presuming that meant that his friend was doing well, he moved on without disturbing Mrs. Adams, who was drowsing in a chair.

He had thought Sara would be asleep, but she was not. Instead she was curled up in a wing chair, wearing a flowing blue velvet robe and with her dark gold hair loose over her shoulders. When he entered, she laid the paper she was reading on a pile in her lap and looked up. In the soft lamplight, her face was not that of a sibyl, but the goddess Nemesis herself.

He paused in the doorway, warning alarms going off in his head, before entering the room and closing the door behind him. "I assume that Ross is improving, or you would still be with him."

"Ross is definitely better," Sara said in a steely voice. "He was able to speak quite coherently. And because of the laudanum, he told me some very interesting things." She held up the sheaf of papers. "Would you care to explain just what you are doing to Charles Weldon, and why?"

He raised his brows in mock surprise. "I see that the honorable Lady Sara has been going through my private papers. I would not have expected it of you."

"Don't try to change the subject! If my standards of honesty are declining, it is probably because of contact with you," his wife said, her voice tight. "Just what the devil have you been doing? And how many people are you injuring in the process of trying to bring Charles down?"

"I am doing nothing to Weldon that he does not deserve," Peregrine said calmly.

Sara's brown eyes flashed. "What gives you the right to be judge, jury, and executioner, Mikahl?"

"You are too civilized, Sara," he retorted. "Anything that is moral for the law is equally moral for an individual—just as a wrong act is not made right because a government commits it instead of an individual."

"I'm not interested in your sophistry! I may be too civilized, but you are an anarchist, and your private war almost got Ross killed," she said, anger rising. "If you want to see Charles Weldon pay for his crimes, why not turn the evidence you have collected over to the authorities? It looks like you have more than enough to send him to prison for the rest of his life."

"Prison would be too easy," he replied, his voice edged. "I want him to suffer. I swore that I would take away everything he valued, and that is what I have been doing."

She lifted the top sheet of paper, listing Weldon's tangible and intangible assets, along with notes on Peregrine's progress. "So I noticed. I see that I fall about the middle of the list, between
social standing
and
barony
. But you didn't have to go as far as marrying me—I should think it would have been quite enough to end the betrothal."

"Ah-h-h," he said, thinking he understood, "so that is what has upset you. You are right, breaking the betrothal would have been enough to injure Weldon. I married you because I wanted to."

He had thought that statement might mollify his wife, but he was wrong. She slapped the sheaf of papers hard against her knee. "I admit that I'm not very flattered by my position on the list, but my expectations have never been high. What appalls me is the cost that others are paying for your private war. How many people will be injured by the fact that you are driving the railway into bankruptcy?"

He shrugged. "When speculators guess correctly, they make money. When they don't, they lose. They deserve what they get."

"It isn't just rich businessmen who are affected," she snapped. "Did you know that our butler invested his life savings in the company because he trusted your business judgment?''

Peregrine was taken aback. "I didn't know that. I'll reimburse him for his losses."

"That will help him, but what about all the others who are involved?" Sara exclaimed. "Some of the investors in the railway may be rich speculators, but there must be many others like Gates, modest people trying to earn a little hope and security."

"They took their chances like anyone else."

"But they didn't know that they were investing in a company that you had decided to use as a weapon." Her mouth was a tight line. "You have been cutting a swath like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Deliberately ruining the railway was bad enough, but your lack of action about the brothels was unforgivable. You could have closed that ghastly place that Jenny was in, but you didn't do it."

"I was waiting for the right time," he said defensively.

"Damn the right time!" Sara leaped to her feet, unable to sit still any longer. "You have known about the place for months, and every night of that time, girls like Jenny have been suffering at the hands of strangers."

The best reply he could make was "I helped Jenny."

"That's not good enough, Mikahl," Sara said, her voice trembling. "She is only one person. What about the other innocent people who have been suffering because you have been so determined to slowly savor every particle of your revenge?"

"The world is full of evil. Nothing I might do will change that. If I had closed down Mrs. Kent's house, another one just like it would be open a week later."

"But you could have done something that would have helped a few girls, and you didn't!" She bowed her head and pressed her hand over her eyes. "You don't even understand why that bothers me, do you? Because you can survive anything, you have no compassion for others who are less strong. You might help someone you know personally, but you have no thought for anyone else.''

"Why should I?" He was beginning to feel heated, so he peeled off his coat and tossed it over a chair. "It is quite enough to be concerned with those I know. I have never deliberately harmed anyone who did not deserve it."

She shook her head dully. "The fact that you are not deliberately harming strangers does not absolve you of responsibility. Nothing that Charles Weldon did to you can justify what you are doing to others."

His anger at her criticism tilted over into fury. "There you are wrong, my innocent little wife. Whatever I do to Charles Weldon will be less than he deserves. For years, the only thing that kept me alive was knowing that someday I would make him suffer as he had made me suffer. And I promised myself that I would be close enough to savor his pain."

"And that includes putting his daughter in a brothel?" Sara said, her voice a bleak thread of sound. "When I saw that on your list, I couldn't believe that you would do it.''

"Nor did I do it," he said sharply. "The idea had occurred to me, but I decided it would be enough if she disappeared for a few days, and Weldon
thought
that she had been sent to a whorehouse. He would have all the suffering without the girl being injured."

Sara's eyes widened with disbelief. "I suppose I must be grateful that you had met Eliza in person. Would you have cheerfully put her in a brothel if she was only a name to you? The fact that you could even consider doing something like that—dear God, you have turned yourself into a monster." She turned away, no longer able to look at her husband.

Peregrine caught her wrist and roughly turned her to face him. "If I am a monster, it is what he made me."

Deliberately she scanned him from head to foot. "Charles Weldon didn't ruin your life in any obvious way. You are a successful, wealthy, intelligent man. You can do and be almost anything you wish. It seems that you choose to be a monster."

Furious, he wanted to shake her. Instead, he released her wrist. "You have no idea what you are talking about.''

"Then tell me," Sara said softly, her stark eyes meeting his. "What did Charles Weldon do to you? Why do you believe you are justified in committing crimes while trying to destroy him?"

Above all, he had wanted to avoid this. Yet he knew that if he could not make Sara understand, a breach that might never heal would open up between them.

He spun away, not able to look at her. "I told you that Jamie McFarland had taken me on his ship. For two years I sailed with him, seeing the world and learning whatever eccentric thing he felt like teaching me. Then, when I was ten, the ship was captured by pirates from Tripoli."

He took a deep breath, bracing himself for what was to come. "Most of the Barbary pirates were actually corsairs who were chartered by their government. The true corsairs operated under an elaborate system where the great European trading nations paid for safe conducts for their ships. There were rules about which foreigners could be sold in the slave market, and the local consuls could reclaim any of their citizens who were captured illegally.''

He stopped by the window, his shoulders rigid as he stared out into the blackness. "But there were some ships that operated outside the rules. Even though we were sailing under the British flag and should have been safe, we were attacked by pirates. Half of Jamie's crew was killed outright. The rest of us were captured and taken to an illegal slave market in Tripoli."

It had been stiflingly hot, the air thick with the stench of fear and pain
. "Charles Weldon was there. He was making an extensive tour of the Mediterranean and was an honored visitor in the city. I think he came to the market from pure curiosity. Since I was a child, I was separated from Jamie and the rest of his crew, and taken to the market with a group of women and children. I saw Weldon and guessed that he might be English, so I broke away from the group and ran over to him. I said that I was English and begged for his help."

Even a quarter century later, the memory was indelible. Weldon was young and handsome, immaculately turned out in spite of the Tripolitan heat. His nostrils had flared with delicate distaste when accosted by the scruffy child. "So you're English. Couldn't be anything else with that dreadful cockney accent.'' A light note of amusement in his voice, he had lifted young Michael's chin. "You're a pretty lad, though you could certainly use a good scrubbing. I've never seen eyes of such a color.''

By then a guard had arrived to take Michael back to the group. As he was being dragged away, Weldon had said languidly, "I'll see what can be done. "

Peregrine's hands clenched convulsively, the pain of biting nails pulling him back to the present. "Christians could not buy slaves, so Weldon arranged to buy me through his host. As he took me to the house he was renting, I told him about Jamie McFarland and the others. I knew that if the British consul was notified, arrangements might be made to release them, so I begged Weldon to contact the consul. He said he would do it."

Besides relief for himself, Michael was delighted that he could do something for Jamie after all the sea captain had done for him
. "Several weeks later, Weldon told me that he had not bothered to notify the consul. It was many years before I was able to return to Tripoli. When I did, I tried to learn what had happened to Jamie and the other crewmen, but they had vanished without a trace. I'm sure that Jamie died in slavery, though God only knows how or where. But I didn't know that at first—I just thought I had been been saved from slavery."

A couple of quiet days had passed at Weldon's house. He hardly saw his benefactor, who had ordered him to take a bath and burn his ragged clothing. A fine Arabic robe in his size had been supplied. There had been fresh fruit and luxurious foods. Then, about the time that Michael was beginning to feel bored and anxious, Weldon had sent for him.

Michael had gone eagerly. He had been fascinated by the dashing young man who had rescued him. Surely a man with such power could have done the same for Jamie McFarland. Perhaps Jamie himself was waiting to take Michael away.

Instead, there had been only Weldon, mildly drunk and wanting amusement. At first Michael had not understood what the charming young aristocrat had wanted. Though uncomfortable with the way Weldon touched him, he had tried not to show it, not wanting to offend his benefactor.

When Weldon's attentions became inescapable, Michael had tried to run away. He had fought, frantic as a trapped animal, when Weldon caught him and forced him down on the divan. But he had been only a child against a grown man.